Wildwood: An imaginative masterpiece

Wildwood (2026) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for strong fantasy violence, bloody images, dramatic intensity and brief profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.1.26 

This film amazes, captivates and surprises on countless levels.

 

Chris Butler’s script — lovingly adapted from the 2011 illustrated fantasy novel by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis — is a touch of L. Frank Baum by way of J.R.R. Tolkien. The 13-year-old protagonists face all manner of good and evil magical characters, some of them not what they initially seem, with everyone engaged in what becomes an ultimate battle that can leave only one side standing.

 

As they initially enter the Impassable Wilderness — known by its inhabitants as
Wildwood — Prue and Curtis are astonished by the enormity of its forests. Sadly,
they'll soon be too scared to appreciate all this splendor...

All that said, this film’s true magic involves the way it was created. It comes from Laika, the Portland, Oregon-based stop-motion animation studio that previously brought us — among others — Coraline, The Boxtrolls and Kubo and the Two Strings. Enchanting as those were, Wildwood overshadows them in terms of ambition and complexity.

 

At 130 minutes, this is by far the longest stop-motion “replacement animation” film ever made. Many live-action production and special-effects teams have achieved astonishing levels of world-building, but this film is on an entirely different scale ... and all in miniature. Director Travis Knight focused on this project for 16 years (!), and then — starting in 2021 — oversaw and orchestrated a 231-week production schedule that used 136 hand-crafted sets and 236 (!!!) puppets. 

 

Love is the only word to describe what motivated the army of puppeteers who painstakingly brought everything to life.

 

The stunning result is impressively lifelike and “real,” but the story remains the most powerful element. You’ll quickly become emotionally invested in these characters.

 

Knight and Butler open with a somber, mildly sinister prologue set Somewhere Else: an early indication that this saga will have teeth.

 

Events then begin on an ordinary day, when Portland-based Prue McKeel (voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee) questions — likely for the umpteenth time — why her parents (Jake Johnson and Maya Erskine) insist that the girl’s baby brother, Mac, must never be taken outside to play. Alas, when Mom and Dad leave for the day, Prue brings Mac along for a playful tour of the city, the infant happily jouncing in a small wagon attached to the girl’s bicycle.

 

Anybody who has visited or lived in Portland will love this buoyant montage, as the duo passes numerous iconic landmarks and individuals such as — among many others — Powell’s Bookstore, Voodoo Donuts and the legendary bagpipe unicycler. After stopping at a park, Prue bumps into classmate Curtis Mehlberg (Jacob Tremblay), a shy and socially awkward misfit obsessed with role-playing games, who has no idea how to reveal his crush on her.

 

But tween angst vanishes abruptly, when — starting with a nod to Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds — Mac suddenly is snatched by a massive murder of crows.

Masterplan: Too lightweight

Masterplan (2026) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five); rated TV-MA, for mild profanity and dramatic tension

Available via: Amazon Prime

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.25.26 

Nothing is blatantly wrong with this larkish, lavishly produced heist thriller.

 

Cinematographer Matteo Cocco lovingly lenses the Rome and Paris location settings, particularly the latter’s Palace du Louvre, and its iconic glass-and-steel pyramid entrance. Production designer Paki Meduri devotes similar attention to the often lush interiors and grittier underground environments, and composer Polérik Rouvière’s score adds appropriate bounce to the heist and action sequences.

 

Chiara (Simona Tabasco) and Jay (Victor Belmondo, right) fist-bump their new
partnership, while mastermind Roger (Stanley Tucci) beams with pleasure.

The film’s timing also is fortuitous, given its proximity to the audacious Crown Jewels heist at the Louvre Museum last October.

Stars Stanley Tucci, Victor Belmondo and Simona Tabasco are pleasing to the eye, and their line deliveries are genre-appropriate ... and that’s part of the problem.

 

The script — credited to five (!) writers — never catches fire. Thomas Vincent’s soulless direction is too slick; Tucci, Belmondo and Tabasco’s characters are too glib, their banter too coy, their expressions too movie. I don’t doubt that they had fun making this film, but not for a moment do their characters feel like real people.

 

To quote Humphrey Bogart’s classic line from 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, their performances are, much too blatantly, “the stuff that dreams are made of” ... and very little else.

 

Chiara (Tabasco), a gifted Italian cybercrime expert, is introduced mid-heist at a lavish, upscale Roman toga party. Jay (Belmondo), a limber French athlete and talented explosives expert, similarly is burgling the presidential suite in a Parisian hotel.

 

Both receive a can’t-resist invitation to meet Roger (Tucci) at his lavishly appointed Lake Como mansion. Their first surprise comes upon learning that Roger actually is the “Snow Leopard,” a legendary master thief. Their second surprise hits immediately thereafter, when Roger reveals that they’re actually half-siblings ... and he’s their father.

 

The third, and biggest surprise? He needs their unique skills to successfully steal the Louvre’s iconic Mona Lisa.

 

Their reactions to that proposal are understandable. Ridiculous. Can’t be done.

 

Ah, but Roger has spent 10 years crafting the perfect plan, and the perfect moment is at hand: October 18, seven days hence, when the museum guards go on strike, leaving a meager support staff. (Cheekily, the actual Louvre heist occurred on October 19.)

 

Roger, convinced that temptation and skill are inbred via “thief genetics,” knows full well that Jay and Chiara will accept. Which they do.

 

The Social Reckoning: Speaks truth to power

The Social Reckoning (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.18.26

Although director David Fincher’s The Social Network was a blistering indictment of the greed and betrayal involved with Facebook’s founding and subsequent rise in popularity — fueled by scripter Aaron Sorkin’s marvelously barbed, Oscar-winning adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires — that film now seems quaint.

 

Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) watches,
with mounting horror, while Facebook employee Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison)
reveals the many ways that her company sacrifices user safety while in pursuit of
ever more "clicks."

Facebook had “only” 608 million subscribers by the end of 2010. Most of the world still got reliably accurate news and information from other trusted sources.

Today, Facebook has slightly more than three billion active users, and — as Sorkin’s new film tells us, via a depressing end title card — a shocking 43 percent of the world’s adults get their “news” from unvetted, unreliable and downright bogus social media posts.

 

Writer/director Sorkin’s sequel is divided into a prologue and three distinct chapters, the latter of which slide the film’s timeline back and forth from 2019 to 2021, with stops in between. The prologue, titled “White Girl Wasted,” initially is a puzzle. A drunk young woman (Portia Doubleday), standing by her overheated vehicle late one night, becomes irrationally angered by the two police officers who (initially) simply wish to help.

 

She erupts into furious, “full Karen” mode, begins live-streaming the encounter, and unleashes a profanity-laced tirade accusing them of harassment “because she’s white.” 

 

Elsewhere, her viral video is seen by a horrified Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a skilled data scientist/product manager who recently has joined Facebook’s Civic Integrity team. Although Haugen genuinely loves her job, she has become increasingly worried by the way Zuckerberg and his lieutenants have aggressively prioritized engagement (“clicks”) and revenue, over even modest user safety.

 

(Haugen became famous as the Facebook whistleblower who testified before the U.S. Congress on October 5, 2021.)

 

During an apparently rare meeting with Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong), Haugen and her fellow team members silently watch as their leader attempts to stand up to him, by insisting that “downstream MSI” (meaningful social interactions) could be “dialed back” to reduce civic misinformation by 38 percent, at a “cost” of reducing engagement by only 1 percent.

 

“One percent at scale,” Zuckerberg snaps back, “is three million people who stop scrolling.”

 

At which point, the suggestion is dead in the water ... along with, quite likely, the Civic Integrity team leader’s employment.

 

It must be noted how Sorkin stages this scene. Zuckerberg’s office, all steel and glass — one of production designer Jon Hutman’s memorable tableaus — is sterile and harshly impersonal. Strong plays Zuckerberg as arrogant, emotionless and coldly condescending: a tyrant who refuses to hear the word “No.” He’d be right at home as a ruthless James Bond villain, except that we’ve had plenty of exposure to the actual Zuckerberg, who really is that contemptuous and oblivious to any notion of “the greater social good.”

Digger: A provocatively grim satire

Digger (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for relentless profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.11.26

This film is for folks who felt that 2021’s Don’t Look Up was insufficiently cynical and depressing.

 

Director Alejnadro G. Iñárritu’s dark-dark-dark comedy is highlighted by a bravura performance by Tom Cruise, successfully operating leagues out of his usual wheelhouse.

 

Despite his best reasoned, well-researched arguments, U.S. Environmental Safety Chief
Dr. Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed, left) is unable to persuade oil tycoon Digger Rockwell
(Tom Cruise) that his massive oil extraction operations are dangerous.

The result is a brutally bleak cautionary saga that hits the target because so much of its script — by Iñárritu, Alexander Dinelaris, Nicolás Giacobone, Sabina Berman and Jez Butterworth — is an uncomfortably accurate reflection of contemporary, real-world behavior by out-of-control power brokers.

It's also a disconcerting parable about the potentially calamitous results of stubbornly rash behavior by one authoritarian individual, unchecked by compliant government entities. (Sound familiar?)

 

On top of which, the horrifying “gimmick” revealed, during this saga’s second and third acts, is so clever that it shall not be discussed here.

 

But consider this analogy: What if Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove had been made 20 years after an actual global nuclear catastrophe, with the intent of allowing the survivors of our forever poisoned planet the cathartic opportunity to witness and jeer the venal, selfish and idiotic behavior of those who had caused the crisis?

 

With that in mind...

 

Iñárritu opens on a typical morning in the life of aging, overweight and jowly oil magnate Digger Rockwell (Cruise, all but unrecognized beneath astonishing makeup and prosthetics). Within seconds, we understand that this man is accustomed to always getting his way. On this particular morning, he’s concerned solely with his beloved but very, veryold and ailing cat: little more than bones and tufts of white fur.

 

The cat looks “off,” and behaves quite strangely. (Hold that thought.)

 

Iñárritu’s handling of these early scenes — and all that follow — is disorienting, bizarre and off-putting. Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s color palette is muted, bereft of bright colors; everything seems washed-out, as if saturated by a dull brown fog. (Impatient viewers might be inclined to give up. Don’t.)

 

A visit from world-renowned veterinarian Dr. Berg (Ross Hart) proves as unsatisfying as the insistence — by Emma (Sandra Hüller), Digger’s half-sister and business partner — that mercy should be granted the poor creature. 

 

This decision is set aside when Digger gets some seriously bad news.

 

In the Grey: An engaging guilty pleasure

In the Grey (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for violence and profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.4.26

British writer/director Guy Ritchie’s action thrillers always are clever, vicarious fun, in great part because of the snarky, deadpan dry wit with which his characters operate.

 

This one is no exception.

 

With bodyguards Sid (Henry Cavill, left) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal) keeping a close
watch, Rachel (Eiza González) executes her next move, in an ongoing scheme to make
an unscrupulous billionaire pay back the $1 billion that he "borrowed" from a U.S.-based
asset management firm.

Its fleeting, blink-and-you-missed-it release on this side of the pond, back in mid-May — resulting in a paltry $5.7 million gross in the United States and Canada — therefore can be chalked up to marketing incompetence, rather than any indication of the film’s merits. In short, it was dumped, and subsequently consigned to streaming services.

So, what did theatergoers miss?

 

Accomplished, unruffled — and aptly named — corporate lawyer Rachel Wild (Eiza González) introduces her occupation and methods via voice-over. She specializes in recovering debts for wealthy and powerful clients, often operating in the “grey area” between legal and larcenous, always assisted by off-books operatives Sid (Henry Cavill) and Bronco (Jake Gyllenhaal).

 

The latest potential client is Spencer Goldstein, an asset management firm whose public face is the cold-blooded Bobby Sheen (Rosamund Pike, appropriately condescending). The firm recently “loaned” $1 billion to ruthless billionaire Manny Salazar (Carlos Bardem), who has refused to pay it back: no surprise to anybody who knows the slightest thing about the guy, as Rachel, Sid and Bronco coolly agree.

 

Objecting to the size of Rachel’s “finder’s fee,” Bobby first sends fellow “fixer” Braxton (Darrell D’Silva) to Salazar’s private Spanish island, to negotiate terms. He’s quickly killed by the billionaire’s security chief, Axel Olsson (Kristofer Hivju, quite credible as a scary sociopath).

 

Back to the wall, Bobby reluctantly accepts Rachel’s terms, at which point Ritchie slides his film into high camp. Rachel describes every facet of Phase One — Procedural and Practical — via a humorous version of a grade-school tutorial session. Sid and Bronco listen attentively, while she calmly makes herself a stovetop negroni svegliato cocktail. 

 

Rachel’s initial conference with Salazar’s attorney, William Horowitz (Fisher Stevens), is mere formality; she knows he’ll simply laugh at her. Which he does, although not without a nervous glance in chaperone Sid’s direction.

 

The team then applies pressure, first by halting Salazar’s construction projects, and also crippling his oil rig. Those and other tactics — all carefully vetted and approved by a judge — get the billionaire’s attention.

 

But that’s just the initial salvo. While Horowitz becomes an increasingly hysterical nervous wreck — losing every court appearance — Rachel, Sid and Bronco slide into Phase Two: Planning and Preparation. The boys take notes and rope in tech/computer guru Ed Glover (Michael Vu), explosives expert Gucci Reyes (Jason Wong), ace getaway driver Jonathan Moreno (Christian Ochoa Lavernia) and seasoned pilot Mick Dunne (Emmett J. Scanlan).

 

Knowing that these increasingly expensive jabs ultimately will result in Salazar demanding a sit-down meeting, Sid and Bronco outline the means by which he and their team will “secure” the heavily guarded island, employing a staggeringly impressive supply of weapons and vehicles. The planning is essential, since they’ll be badly outnumbered by Salazar’s private army.

 

All of these details simultaneously appear, in script, on the left side of the screen ... as they might be listed by a school teacher on a blackboard.

 

Rachel’s teams also repeatedly practice contingency plans for evacuating her, if necessary, via one of the island’s three possible extraction points.

 

Even the quieter ploys are ingenious, such as some dodgy backgammon games, and a (ahem) “Trojan Rat.”

 

We can’t help being impressed by the absurd, over-the-top thoroughness of all this preparatory effort: both from the standpoint of Ritchie having concocted every meticulously far-fetched element, and also because of the accomplished thoroughness with which Sid, Bronco and their guys set up and rehearse all the details. 

 

It’s hard not to laugh ... but it’s a chuckle of head-shaking admiration.

 

And we think, golly; what could possibly go wrong?

 

Silly question, of course.

 

Cavill and Gyllenhaal are a stitch, both collectively and individually. Both are preternaturally calm and unruffled, neither smiling much, although Gyllenhaal’s half-smile — often when Bronco is confronted by an adversary — means that he’s about to do something lethal. Cavill’s Sid is just a touch looser, and less inclined to impulse, as befits his nickname of “Captain Sensible.”

 

Together, Sid and Bronco share the easygoing banter of a comfortably married couple ... and, indeed, if they aren’t a couple at the moment, they clearly were at one time.

 

The eternally poised González makes it easy to understand why all of the cheerfully unscrupulous Rachel’s “boys” regard her with such trust and respect, as befits her nickname of “Mom.” At the risk of stating the obvious, González also looks terrific in all of costume designer Loulou Bontemps’ strikingly colorful outfits.

 

Stevens has a marvelous time as the increasingly harried and terrified Horowitz, deservedly wondering when Salazar will snap and blame him for everything that has gone wrong.

 

Even as the situation turns violent in the third act, nothing can be taken seriously. Ritchie maintains a mocking tone throughout, well aware that he’s orchestrating preposterous nonsense. He never loses his story’s reliance on boy’s-own-adventure attitude. It’s all great fun, up to the final scene, with its promise of anticipated payback.

 

Everybody involved deserved much better exposure than this film got. 

Heart of the Beast: A profound survival drama

Heart of the Beast (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated R, for violence, peril, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.27.26

The potentially dire implications of this film’s fleeting prologue constantly hover, like a dark cloud, over the subsequent drama.

 

As they begin their long trek back to the safety of civilization, Belmont (Brad Pitt) and his
loyal dog Odin make a point of replenishing their water supply whenever possible.

That aside, and acknowledging the many other impressive aspects of director David Ayer’s survival drama, Cameron Alexander’s original story is a superlative tribute to the bravery, loyalty and nobility of military combat dogs.

And, it must be said, this saga is dominated by one of the all-time best movie dogs ever.

 

(Played primarily by a former search and rescue dog named Uber, with three of his offspring — littermates Ryker and Zika, and their younger half-brother Hondo — used as stunt or secondary doubles.)

 

Anyway...

 

Following the aforementioned prologue, we bounce back seven days, as James Belmont (Brad Pitt) smoothly pilots his pontoon plane to an isolated beach in the Alaskan wilderness. His sole companion, in the passenger seat, is a massive German Shepherd named Odin.

 

Both are retired from combat service, Belmont from a long career as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer, and military service dog trainer. Odin is his final combat dog, and now constant companion.

 

They’ve obviously made such trips many times before, to this or similar beaches. Belmont has the process down to a science: two large waterproof containers with everything necessary — tent, food, first aid supplies — along with a huge cooler laden with dozens of bottles of Belgian brown ale (for which he developed a taste, during overseas deployment). Odin has his own specialized “backpack,” with small pouches on both sides of his huge chest.

 

Belmont also carries an impressive rifle, but he’s not some capricious hunter; he respects life too much. The weapon is solely for self-defense, and he mostly uses its scope to watch moose, birds and other wildlife.

 

Belmont and Odin are completely at ease, and comfortable with each other’s company. The former clearly has nobody else in his life, and that’s the way he likes it.

 

But come nighttime, both often suffer from PTSD nightmares.

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom — A wild 'n' wooly delight

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (2026) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five); rated PG, for no particularly reason

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

In a rare case of a supporting player overtaking the popularity of his former co-stars, Shaun the Sheep clearly has stolen the Aardman spotlight, since his unassuming debut in 1995’s Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit animated claymation short, A Close Shave.

 

When one of the flock members accidentally grows a cauliflower, instead of a pumpkin,
Shaun naturally has the perfect solution.

Much of that success is due to constant exposure. Creator Nick Park quickly recognized the potential in his mischievous little sheep, ultimately resulting in two big-screen films — 2015’s Shaun the Sheep Movie, and 2019’s Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon — and a TV series that began in 2007 and, with 190 episodes over seven series thus far, has become one of the longest-running animated shows on British television.

Much of Shaun’s charm — and that of his co-stars — comes from the fact that their adventures take place without any intelligible dialog, making them viewable anywhere in the world. That also requires shrewdly clever scripting, along with carefully directed voice talent. The result is always impressive; it’s amazing how posture, facial expressions, finely shaded baaas and bleats (by the sheep), and equally expressive grunts, groans, ums, ohs and other auditory squawks (by the humans) can convey comprehensible thoughts and intentions.

 

Park has stepped back to a supervisorial position this time, entrusting Shaun’s third big-screen adventure to directors Steve Cox and Matthew Walker, and writers Mark Burton and Giles Pilbrow. They’ve concocted a delightful, October-themed escapade that frequently dabbles in Golden Age Hollywood horror movie tropes.

 

With Halloween just a few days away, Shaun (voiced by Justin Fletcher) and his sheep cohorts — Hazel, Nuts, plump Shirley, the Twins, little Timmy and Timmy’s Mum — have spent the month carefully tending their pumpkin patch, which has been concealed from the Farmer (John Sparkes), guard dog Bitzer (also Sparkes) and the farm’s snarky, destructive pigs.

 

The Farmer, in turn, has been eagerly awaiting the annual hoedown-themed Halloween dance in the nearby town of Mossingham. He also hopes to reveal his romantic feelings for the local vet (Nina Sosanya) by inviting her along, but his poor self-esteem focuses on his baldness. He yearns for his youthful days, when his lustrous locks helped him become a heavy metal cowboy (a mirthful look, captured in a prized snapshot he yearningly eyes).

 

If only he could grow back his hair...

Mayday: Easygoing Cold War thrills

Mayday (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated PG-13, for violence, action and fleeting profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.13.26

This film’s lighthearted, mismatched-buddies-in-peril tone notwithstanding, co-directors and writers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein deserve credit for inserting a strong message relevant to our times:

 

Don’t let government propaganda and assumptions about “the other” interfere with our individual ability to judge people based on their character and behavior.

 

Evading KGB pursuers was hard enough when Nikolai (Kenneth Branagh, center) had
only his new friend Troy (Ryan Reynolds) to worry about .... but matters get even more
intense when Nikolai's daughter (Maria Bakalova) enters the picture.

The year is 1987, toward the end of the U.S./Soviet Cold War. Despite U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s initial belief that the Soviets were dangerous and immoral, his tone has softened following Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985. Even so, U.S. military forces remain on constant alert for signs of nuclear build-up.

Following a training drill during which U.S. Navy fighter pilot Lt. Troy Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) demonstrates “the right stuff” during the unconventional rescue of a wingman, he’s selected for a special reconnaissance op. The CIA-sponsored mission: to surveille suspected missile silos 1,200 miles inside the Soviet border.

 

To Kelly’s unhappy surprise, he’s relegated to co-pilot status, responsible solely for running the camera. Their long-range, high-altitude SR-71 Blackbird instead will be flown by Air Force pilot Maj. Pete Sanders (Louis Cancelmi, appropriately condescending), an insufferable jerk with the typical Air Force bias against Navy pilots.

 

Sanders pays for that hubris in the worst possible way, when they’re intercepted by a Soviet MiG. The quick-thinking Kelly manages to destroy the MiG — quite improbably, which signals the tone this film will take — and eject. But debris destroys his parachute as snow-covered terra firma appears below, and his final fall results in a bad leg injury. His last conscious image is of an approaching cloaked figure, carrying a nasty-looking rifle...

 

...who, when Kelly regains consciousness, turns out to be benevolent Nikolai Ustinov (Kenneth Branagh), a former KGB officer turned passionate admirer of American culture in general, and his bootlegged VHS copy of the movie “Top Gun” in particular.

Coyote Vs. ACME: A smash riot

Coyote Vs. ACME (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five); rated PG, for cartoon violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 9.6.26

Chuck Jones would be thrilled to bits.

 

When he and writer Michael Maltese co-created the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, for the 1949 Warner Bros. cartoon short “Fast and Furry-ous,” they likely thought this pairing would be a one-off.

 

Paige (Lana Condor) and her Uncle Kevin (Will Forte) are about the experience the
chaos that results from even a seemingly innocuous ACME product ... and they'd also
better be careful with what's inside that box.

As if.

That ingenious tribute to the silent-movie slapstick efforts of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd became — at the risk of citing the infamous oxymoron — an instant classic. 

 

Jones went on to direct 25 more theatrical shorts featuring the doomed efforts of Carnivorous Vulgaris (the Coyote) to catch Accelleratii Incredibus (the Road Runner), up to 1980’s “Soup or Sonic.” While the first dozen or so arguably are funnier and more clever than what followed, as a whole it’s still an awesome body of work.

 

I’m therefore delighted to report that director Dave Green and his team of writers — Samy Burch, James Gunn and Jeremy Slater, inspired by Ian Frazer’s hilariously deadpan 1990 humor piece in The New Yorker — have faithfully adhered to Jones’ wit, style and frenetic comedy pacing with this phantastic feature film.

 

Full disclosure: What follows is an unapologetic and shamelessly biased five-star review by someone who has, from the moment I was old enough to appreciate his work, long worshipped at the altar of All Things Chuck Jones ... and I now have no trouble adding this marvelously chaotic blend of live action and animation to that pantheon of cartoon comedy.

 

The premise here is as golden as it is simple. After the film opens on Wile E.’s most recent attempts to catch his prey — each failing, due (as always) to faulty engineering — the Coyote finally realizes that the blame, all these years, is not his. No, he has been the victim of dangerously defective ACME products.

 

The obvious solution: a product liability lawsuit.

 

But something even more sinister is afoot here. A prologue reveals that longtime ACME scientist Dr. Lorre — an intentional caricature of Peter Lorre, one of numerous movie stars lampooned in early Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies shorts — has become convinced that the work he has been doing, on the clandestine “Project Sisyphus,” is unacceptably dangerous. He manages to box up one mysterious item before being caught and — true to ACME form — forced to step into a small circular black hole. He vanishes, after which the hole is carefully rolled up and placed in storage (!).

The Whisper Man: No reason to eavesdrop

The Whisper Man (2026) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five); rated R, for bloody violence, disturbing images, profanity and suicide

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang 

Director James Ashcroft gets points for maintaining a consistently creepy atmosphere of unsettling dread, but that can’t compensate for a storyline that relies too heavily on coincidence, contrivance and just plain stupid behavior by the primary characters.

 

Tom (Adam Scott) and his young son Jake (Acston Luca Porto) initially are optimistic
about their move to a new community ... but they'll soon have second thoughts,
starting with the quietly malevolent house in which they've chosen to live.

Scripters Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer have taken considerable liberty with their uneven adaptation of British crime author Steve Mosby’s 2019 debut novel (written under the pseudonym Alex North). For starters, the setting has been moved to the fictitious woodsy community of Garretton, New Jersey, still reeling from a series of grisly child abductions and murders committed two decades earlier by a figure known as the “Whisper Man.”

All these years later, children still frighten each other by chanting a macabre poem generated by those tragedies:

 

If your window’s left unlatched,

You’ll hear him tapping at the glass.

 

Disturbingly — as the film begins — a young boy, Neil Spencer, has just gone missing. The search team is led by local police Detective Amanda Beck (Michelle Monaghan), and the group discovers a body ... but this one is years decomposed.

 

Elsewhere, Tom Kennedy (Adam Scott) and his 8-year-old son, Jake (Acston Luca Porto), have just driven to Garretton, hoping for a fresh start following the tragic loss of Tom’s wife, and the boy’s mother. Depending on the camera angle, looking through the front windshield, there either is — or isn’t — somebody sitting in the back seat behind Tom.

 

As we soon learn, this is Jake’s special imaginary friend.

 

“Your mom always wanted us to move back to the town we grew up in,” Tom says. His relationship with Jake is loving, but strained; Tom can see that his son still is damaged goods, and he tries hard to compensate. Jake, in turn, carries his “packet of special things” wherever he goes.

 

So, okay; moving to Garretton is prompted by a valid reason ... but why did Tom pick this particular house in which to live? It’s a massive, ominous three-story affair, large enough for a family of eight, laden with huge, empty rooms that exude a palpable level of dread: completely impractical for just two people.

 

(As it eventually transpires, this house is a poor choice for several unpleasant reasons: merely the first of this dumb script’s numerous contrivances.)

 

So, they settle in. Jake begins school; Tom, a novelist, hopes this environment will help overcome a serious case of writer’s block.

 

A brief cutaway reveals poor Neil (Exavier Montanez) locked in a tiny room, being terrorized by a deranged hooded sicko, whose whispered platitudes are wholly at odds with his eventual intentions.

Mutiny: Plenty of shipboard action

Mutiny (2026) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for considerable profanity and strong, bloody violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 8.23.26

Jason Statham’s action thrillers usually follow a predictable, cookie-cutter series of plot beats:

 

• His character is a seasoned, hardened, stoic, impressively capable and highly decorated former cop/military officer equally adept with weapons and hand-to-hand combat, with a Tragic Memory in his past;

 

Moving cautiously through the innards of the cargo ship Artemis, Cole (Jason Statham)
and Angie (Annabelle Wallis) search for a first aid kit, which will allow him to attend to
her wounded shoulder.

• He has re-entered civilian life in either an isolated, quieter or conventional manner, usually befriending somebody along the way, but said person...

 • ... gets killed, for some nefarious reason, prompting a won’t-ever-stop vow of vengeance.

 

Lather, rinse, repeat. But why change? It always works...

 

This new entry in Statham’s oeuvre comes from scripters J.P. Davis and Lindsay Michel, who creatively dump Statham’s Cole Reed into an intriguing scenario during the bulk of the action.

 

I’m less impressed by director Jean-François Richet, who opens the film with a pointless flash-forward — what, he worried about gaining our attention? — and subsequently favors too many dizzy overhead drone shots and tight-tight-tight close-ups of Statham and the other actors. All are hallmarks of lazy, uninspired directing.

 

The flash-forward aside, events begin quietly, with Reed — a former Marine commando and London SCO19 Specialist Firearm police officer — five years into a happy position as security chief for his close friend and mentor, billionaire Thai shipping tycoon Tibu Campallo (Ramon Tikaram). The feeling is mutual: Tibu regards Cole as family, and they enjoy playing chess together.

 

After a long and successful career, Tibu has decided to retire. He clearly regrets abandoning the empire that took a lifetime to build, particularly since his son, Kameron (Chaneil Kular), has no interest in the business. At the posh retirement party, Cole notices a dapper but somehow sinister figure (Arnas Fedaravicious) hovering in the background; their eyes briefly lock, and then the unnamed guest moves on.

 

Later, while driving Tibu home, their car is ambushed. Cole kills all the attackers, but not before Tibu is mortally wounded. Knowing he has very little time, Cole scoops up the killers’ IDs and flees. The sinister figure, with numerous bent Thai cops in his pocket, arranges for Cole to be tagged as Tibu’s killer; this version of events is blasted through all media outlets, and an arrest warrant is issued.

 

Cole notices that the killers crewed on the container ship Artemis; by fortunate coincidence, he resembles one of them. Using that man’s ID, he’s able to pass through Customs and board the ship, determined to figure out What The Heck Is Going On.