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REVIEW: "Wildwood" (2026)

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(Source: IMDb )  For more than three decades now, we’ve been living in a landscape of visual worldbuilding and storytelling across film, television, and all forms of media. Specific examples have taken years to develop and produce, including Peter Jackson and company’s seven-year journey in adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary world of Middle-earth for the big screen with The Lord of the Rings , or James Cameron and his team spending two decades bringing the planetary world of Pandora and its residents to life in three Avatar pictures.  On the flip side, it's refreshing, even encouraging, to know there are filmmakers and artists out there who prefer telling stories practically and by hand. Likewise, the duration of production and anticipation leading up to their respective release dates is just as (if not more) engaging, especially if it's deeply personal. Hayao Miyazaki took what ended up being about a decade between his reported last film The Wind Rises and his welcome retur...
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REVIEW: “You Can See Everything” (2026)

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(Source: IMDb )  It’s been said that truth is stranger than fiction. The thing is, how do we discern one from the other?  Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford University at the age of 19 to found the company she claimed would revolutionize blood testing, as well as the health and pharmaceutical industries at large. In a short number of years, several business investors and clients quickly boarded the bandwagon known as Theranos (a combination of therapy and diagnosis), mesmerized by the very concept and reported lab results from a single drop of blood.  Later, it was revealed that not only did the technology not work. (Outsiders and experts had questions and concerns even before that, regarding the company’s tech, as well as their ethics and methods.) Furthermore, said clients and investors were all scammed, as the whole thing was staged.  Holmes is currently serving an 11-year prison term for fraud. One month before her sentence, she and her partner Billy Evans ...
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THRILLS AND CHILLS: “Clayface” (2026)

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(Source: IMDb )   Considered a low-tier villain in Batman’s rogues gallery during his early comic book days, the shape-shifting monstrosity known as Clayface was elevated to popularity in the early-1990s, thanks to a two-episode arc on Batman: The Animated Series , which significantly retooled the character as a formidable and layered foe.  In contrast to Sony’s handling of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery in recent years (i.e., Venom , Morbius , Madame Web , and  Kraven the Hunter ), the cast and crew behind Clayface ’s live-action, feature-length debut ride the coattails of Todd Philips’ standalone Joker entries starring Joaquin Phoenix, but set in the same DC Studios universe as  Superman  and Supergirl , and in that franchise’s gritty, crime-infested Gotham City. And, in the same vein as John Carpenter’s The Thing , David Cronenberg’s The Fly , Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance , and even Frankenstein’s monster, the filmmakers (including director James Watkin, co...
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RETROSPECT: “Heavyweights” (1995)

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(Source: IMDb )  Growing up in the 1990s, there were very few movies and TV shows featuring characters and groups of people that I genuinely identified with, particularly outcasts and those who weren’t perceived as “cool kids” by comparison. From the earliest Nicktoons (Doug Funnie, anyone?) to Saturday morning fun on ABC (looking at you, Recess ), and, of course, several live-action comedies from Disney, it’s these categories, in retrospect, that have held up against the more popular types for me. With the latter in mind, one of the funniest entries in this roster (especially for us Millenials) was a comedy about overweight kids who attend a summer camp, only for the new owner to turn it into a weight loss regimen.  Right off the cuff (or should I say, scale?), I’m not sure Heavyweights (a co-production with Joe Roth’s former Caravan Pictures company) is the kind of movie that could be made today, what with all the apparent fat shaming. (Eddie Murphy’s remake of The Nutty Pr...
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REVIEW: “Digger” (2026)

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(Source: IMDb )  In 2008, actor-filmmaker Ben Stiller made a satirical sendup called Tropic Thunder . It featured a star-studded cast of both acclaimed and comedic actors mocking the state of Hollywood. One of them included a foul-mouthed studio executive played by none other than Tom Cruise—which left many people reportedly bewildered when they found out it was him.  Known primarily for action tentpoles as well as doing his own stunts, many people may forget that the Mission: Impossible veteran has had a varied screen career as a younger actor throughout the 1980s and into the 2000s. As such, Cruise’s credits range from familial dramas ( Rain Man ) to war epics ( Born on the Fourth of July ), legal thrillers ( A Few Good Men ), horror ( Interview With the Vampire ), sports comedies ( Jerry Maguire ), and heavy ensemble pieces ( Magnolia ).  This year, under the direction of Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Cruise almost completely disappears into the role of a larger-than-life oi...
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