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Movie Review: BEWARE BOIUNA

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:19:02 +0000

Rating: R
Stars: Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green, Will Close, Vincente Peña, Jaime Newball, Sergio Herrera, Jackson Bews
Writer: Alan McElroy, story by Tony Giglio and Alan McElroy
Director: Mike P. Nelson
Distributor: Lionsgate
Release Date: October 2, 2026

As giant snake movies go (are there enough to qualify as an actual genre, or are these still a subgenre?), BEWARE BOIÚNA is perfectly decent. Director Mike P. Nelson and writer Alan McElroy, working from a story by Tony Giglio and McElroy, avoid a lot of the traditional associated pitfalls. There are genuine scares, true reversals of expectation, we don’t see too much of the snake, and there aren’t explosives handily sitting around.

Perhaps best of all, none of the characters are dumb enough to intentionally seek out Boiúna, as she is called by the indigenous people who reside along the Amazon River. Opening narration explains to us the legend of Boiúna. Always awake, the prehistoric-sized anaconda rests in the water. She is still in times of peace, but active when there is conflict. This is her territory, and “she decides who lives and who dies.”

After that, we see violent conflict almost immediately, as a camera crew and the authorities invade an illegal gold mining camp near the Amazon in Colombia. Boiúna decides a bunch of folks should die, although to be fair, the humans have already come to their own homicidal conclusions on that score.

From here, we cut to the tranquility of the H.R. Hermes, a nailed-together but functional ship under the captaincy of easygoing Raúl (Jaime Newball). There’s little doubt that engineer Lena (Kiana Madeira) views Raúl as a father figure, and he loves “like the daughter I never had,” but she’s mainly on the job in a quest to find her missing brother Jorge (Sergio Herrera).

The Hermes is currently taking a trio of medical aid workers to various riverside villages, where malaria is rampant. The contingent of healers consists of Dr. Pedro Villanueva (Vincente Peña) and his assistants Allison (Jessica Rothe) and Callum (Will Close).

It is made plain early on that Boiúna is hardly the only danger around. She doesn’t fully reappear for a good while. By then, there have been numerous fatalities, all from other causes.

When Lena tries to cheer up a shaken Allison at a local bar, they are approached by American surveyor Brennan Malloy (Logan Marshall-Green). It’s unclear whether he and his crew are engaged in legal activities or not, but they are definitely up to no good in terms of both the environment and the locals.

One thing leads to another, and soon Malloy and Company are using their big corporate ship to pursue the Hermes in parts of the river that are mostly unpopulated – well, mostly unpopulated by humans, anyway.

BEWARE BOIÚNA sails along briskly, with outbreaks of gore and dark humor here and there. (Poor Callum has a mosquito incident likely to deter tourism.) There’s good action suspense among the characters, who are all well-played. Madeira is first among equals as a very plausible butt-kicker who nevertheless respects and fears Boiúna.

Despite the effective glimpses of the snake’s sides seen through the trees and mostly excellent stunt work, there are a couple of glitchy shots. There’s also a narrative issue that probably won’t bother most viewers, but Boiúna seems to have trouble keeping her meals down. Yes, snakes sometimes regurgitate, but this is generally a sign of distress. Given what/who she eats, BEWARE BOIÚNA fairly enough plays this for gross-out and shock value, but we start wondering if this is going to turn into a plot point.

Bonus values include the fact that BEWARE BOIÚNA was actually shot in Colombia, it highlights some real-world issues, and Lena’s t-shirt game is consistently outstanding.

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Movie Review: THE INFLUENCER PROJECT

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 08:18:55 +0000

Rating: R
Stars: Chiara King, Mike Nybroe, Jazmine Summer, Luca Storm, Alexandre Willaume, Ronja Hauge Schierup, Eos Karlsson
Writers: Lars Ap, Anders Jon, Mike Nybroe
Director: Mike Nybroe
Distributor: Hades Films
Release Date: October 2, 2026

THE INFLUENCER PROJECT begins with the online information, “This film is influenced by real events.”

This is hard to argue with: there really are influencers who can make a good living by being paid to promote brands, and these influencers sometimes attract unpleasant and even dangerous stalkers.

For that matter, THE INFLUENCER PROJECT stars Chiara King as an Instagram/TikTok influencer named Chiara King, and director Mike Nybroe, who wrote the screenplay with Lars Ap and Anders Jon, plays a documentary filmmaker named Mike Nybroe, so there are people with these names who have these or similar jobs.

THE INFLUENCER PROJECT opens with a pretty young woman, Alma (Ronja Hauge Schierup), welcoming us to her livestream. She seems uneasy and we soon learn why.

This start makes us think that perhaps THE INFLUENCER PROJECT may have a supernatural component. It’s not too spoilery to say that it does not.

We then meet Chiara on her own stream. English, attractive and personable, she’s up to 1.5 million followers after what she calls the “viral kissing video.” She has a supportive manager, Alice (Jazmine Summer), who encourages Chiara’s ambition to get to 10 million followers. Chiara feels that in order to reach her goal, she’ll have to do something no one has done before to get there and she’s willing to do whatever that is.

Chiara is invited to Copenhagen, Denmark, by a tourist organization that wants a documentary crew, led by Mike, to follower her around the picturesque city for a week. While Chiara is there, clothing and jewelry and other businesses pay her to show off their wares.

But a stalker who calls himself “King_Slayer” and whose image is a metal mask with chainmail appears in Chiara’s feed, telling her to stop posting, or else he’ll rape and kill her. Then King_Slayer’s own live feed shows he’s getting close enough to Chiara to record her without being seen.

Apart from an initial reaction of, “Wait, Chiara’s being stalked by Jaime Lannister?”, there’s a lot to unpack here.

On the one hand, there is some legitimate discussion of exactly what it is that successful influencers do, and whether and why that’s a good or a bad thing. There’s also a discussion of what may drive online stalkers.

When THE INFLUENCER PROJECT starts to lean into SCREAM-like story curlicues, it works well enough as it goes. However, lacking SCREAM’s self-awareness, the movie bypasses opportunities to delve into what being an influencer does for and to Chiara in psychological terms. (The rape threats are a major “ick” factor, albeit that aspect doesn’t come to pass.)

Additionally, we get a whole lot of what looks like actual influencer material, to the point where, unless that is one’s preferred form of entertainment (and maybe even then), a lot of viewers will feel they’ve had enough of watching a stranger, i.e., Chiara, who we don’t know as a person very well, eat and go shopping, even if it is in Copenhagen, well before THE INFLUENCER PROJECT goes full slasher.

However, this may be the point. What THE INFLUENCER PROJECT shares with movies like INFLUENCER and INFLUENCERS (apart from title similarity) is the notion that influencers are such an irritating phenomenon that they can incite homicidal mania. While most won’t think Chiara deserves to be killed or even terrorized for her chosen form of self-expression and employment, many will sympathize with the bad guys’ desire not to be subjected to insincerity and paid fake enthusiasm.

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Movie Review: PRIMETIME

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:22:54 +0000

Rating: R
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Matthew Maher, Phoebe Bridgers, Bokeem Woodbine, Alex Winter, Tony Revolori
Writer: Ajon Singh, based on the article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich
Director: Lance Oppenheim
Distributor: A24
Release Date: September 25, 2026

TO CATCH A PREDATOR was a real TV series, spun off from the news program DATELINE NBC. TO CATCH A PREDATOR ran on NBC 2004-2007 in (as the title tells us) primetime, opposite ABC’s LOST.

Robert Pattinson stars as TO CATCH A PREDATOR’s host Chris Hansen. The real Hansen, a ten-time Emmy winner, is reportedly furious about PRIMETIME and it’s easy to understand why. He is depicted here as someone who may genuinely perceive his professional mission as noble, but whose desire for fame and mainstream television success overwhelms every other aspect of his personality.

TO CATCH A PREDATOR showed how men (there were never any women involved at the “predator” end) who want to have sex with underage teens (and even children) are entrapped using emails and meetings at the home of the supposed teen’s relatives when no one is home.

“Decoys” – adults posing as teens – meet the subjects briefly, leave the room, and then Hansen and his camera team close in. Hansen reads from transcripts of the computer chats while the men squirm or cry in shame and apprehension, while police outside wait to arrest the would-be statutory rapists.

The main characters here are Hansen and two fictionalized individuals who represent actual people. Hansen’s main producer on TO CATCH A PREDATOR is Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), whose only moral compass is in getting her job done. She doesn’t need the spotlight, but Hansen’s lack of appreciation for what she does – and more, ignoring her judgment – increasingly bothers her.

The other primary figure is Dan Plumb (Skyler Gisondo in a star-making turn), a sweet-natured young aspiring actor who has no idea what he’s auditioning for when he comes in to read for PREDATOR. Despite everyone, including fellow decoy Del (Phoebe Bridgers), telling Dan that this isn’t an acting gig, Dan persists in treating it as if it is, getting into character and preparing.

Dan’s dedication to the job makes him valuable as a decoy. He craves Hansen’s attention and approval and is as vulnerable as they come. At the same time, the spark of friendly connection that sometimes occurs when the targets show up weighs on Dan’s conscience. These guys are trying to commit bad acts, but they’re still human beings. Should they be treated like this?

Xavier Von Erck (Matthew Maher) is, at least in PRIMETIME, the team member who writes up the decoy side of the chats and leads the charge in getting prospective offenders to show up. He clearly believes he’s on the side of the angels, but PRIMETIME doesn’t go too far into how he’s affected by the online dialogue he creates.

An exploration of Van Erck could give us something new. Perhaps the filmmakers didn’t see this as worthy of attention because Van Erck, a real person, was never a household name; perhaps such exploration could create unwanted legal problems. Either way, it seems like a missed opportunity.

There is a point in PRIMETIME when we start to think that maybe TO CATCH A PREDATOR should have changed its title to ARE YOU AN IDIOT? At least as the film portrays it, the show is a nationwide hit, a Nielsen ratings powerhouse, available to all on a weekly basis. Yet somehow, week after week, predators keep using emails and setting up meetings in exactly the way the well-publicized series depicts.

When TO CATCH A PREDATOR debuted, we can understand how its subjects might not be aware of the peril, but a year in, it seems like somebody involved in the program might at least wonder aloud about this. But PRIMETIME doesn’t seem interested in this question.

Otherwise, PRIMETIME feels like it’s running on two tracks. Directed by Lance Oppenheim from a screenplay by Ajon Singh, based on the article “Tonight on Dateline This Man Will Die” by Luke Dittrich, gives us the often surprising, sometimes even shocking parts of TO CATCH A PREDATOR that are consistently intriguing.

But then there is the character study aspect. Dan of course does change as he weighs his goals and emotional needs against the consequences of what he agrees to do.

While Pattinson’s performance as Hansen is excellent and Wever’s as Andie even better, we can’t tell what having the show on primetime does for or to them. From what we see here, they are exactly the same do-whatever-it-takes careerists at the start as they are at the end, momentarily shockable but not fundamentally shakable. We can’t help feeling they’d be the same if their show was on local cable, just using hunger for success as justification for their extreme actions instead of using success itself as justification.

PRIMETIME is credible, it just doesn’t wind up telling us anything we don’t already know.

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Movie Review: SUNNY DANCER

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 09:22:47 +0000

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Bella Ramsey, Daniel Quinn-Toye, Ruby Stokes, Earl Cave, Conrad Khan, Jasmine Elcock, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Louis Gaunt, Josie Walker, Jessica Gunning, James Norton, Neil Patrick Harris
Writer: George Jaques
Director: George Jaques
Distributor: Quiver Distribution
Release Date: September 18, 2026

Directed and written by George Jaques, SUNNY DANCER is a film pulling in two different directions – and it’s not comedy vs. drama, though that’s definitely here.

Instead, on the one hand, we’ve got a sextet of adolescent protagonists who have cancer, insisting very credibly that they don’t want to be uplifted, admired, inspired or otherwise viewed as symbols of heroism or targets of sympathy. With Jaques’s dialogue and his group of on-target performers, we can empathize with this.

On the other hand, we’ve got SUNNY DANCER as a whole, which very much does want to uplift, inspire, symbolize and so on. The results feel a bit schizophrenic.

Our protagonist is seventeen-year-old Ivy Pritchard (the terrific Bella Ramsey), who has been in remission from leukemia for ten months. Her parents, Karen (Jessica Gunning) and Bob (James Norton), are concerned that Ivy has become increasingly withdrawn, not maintaining old friendships or taking an interest in anything.

In the hopes of bringing Ivy out of her shell, her folks sign her up for four weeks of summer at CRF Camp in Scotland, where she’ll be amongst cancer survivors her own age. Despite protesting being sent to “chemo camp,” Ivy agrees to it.

Ivy’s assigned roommate is Ella (Ruby Stokes), a camp veteran who is about to turn eighteen and is determined to lose her virginity this year – if possible, to hunky counselor Tristan (Louis Gaunt). Ella eventually wears Ivy down and persuades her to start hanging out with Ella’s camp friends, who include soulful Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye), sardonic Ralph (Earl Cave), loyal Archie (Conrad Khan) and cool Maisie (Jasmine Elcock).

When this group is together, they’re delightful. We believe that they can talk to each other in ways that they can’t with anyone who hasn’t had their experiences, from treatment to pity to suddenly losing friends whose cancer has returned.

Because they can open up on life-and-death matters, it frees them to communicate on lighter topics that teens aren’t necessarily keen to discuss across gender lines. These scenes are pure fun.

However, SUNNY DANCER doesn’t wholly seem certain of how we’re meant to view Ivy. She has a clear rebellious side, but given the issues her peers are going through, it’s hard to imagine (although it’s what we’re told) that there haven’t been other outbursts like hers at CRF previously.

Furthermore, for someone who’s ostensibly hard to reach, Ivy is awfully compliant with her parents. When the whole family breaks into a car-appropriate song and dance on the road to camp, Ivy on the whole seems like the ideal daughter.

Some of how Camp CRF functions is mystifying. Camp “president” Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) assures his charges that their stay will be full of surprising new adventures, while setting up a curriculum that seems a whole lot like that of similar establishments. We’re never clear if he’s being intentionally corny or can’t hear himself.

The camp also has co-ed cabin assignments, which seems like it might raise a few eyebrows. Then there’s a day trip to town, with no adult supervision in sight (and apparently no pocket money given to the youths). When Patrick is appalled that there’s a confrontation with some townies, it seems like somebody ought to ask him where he or at least a counselor was during all of this. Finally, there’s a third-act swerve that just tries too hard.

SUNNY DANCER has superb young actor performances and intelligent observations doing battle with good intentions. Which ultimately wins out will be up to the individual viewer to decide.

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Movie Review: NEVER AFTER DARK

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 07:22:37 +0000

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Moeka Hoshi, Kurumi Inagaki, Kento Kaku, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Bokuzo Masana, Tae Kimura
Writer: Dave Boyle
Director: Dave Boyle
Distributor: Magnolia Pictures
Release Date: September 25, 2026

NEVER AFTER DARK (NEBÂ AFUTÂ DÂKU) is unusual for several reasons. The onscreen one is that it introduces a novel (at least to this reviewer) supernatural concept. It’s uncommon in a meta sense as it is written and directed by an American, filmmaker Dave Boyle, but set and shot in Japan, with an all-Japanese cast and Japanese-language dialogue (subtitled in English).

Airi (Moeka Hoshi) is a young woman with abundant psychic gifts, who lives out of her car with her opinionated but loving sister Miku (Kurumi Inagaki). We learn that Airi easily sees and communicates with the souls of the departed in a nice twist early on.

Airi is not afraid of the spirits of the dead. In fact, she makes her living by getting paid by the owners of haunted houses to find out why the deceased are hanging around and what they want and then giving it to them or otherwise persuading them to move on to the next plane.

When Airi is summoned by the clearly starstruck Teiko (Tae Kimura), the medium thinks it’s just another job. Teiko has purchased and lives in what used to be an isolated hotel, and she thinks she’s seen the ghost of a man several times.

Teiko’s adult son Gunji (Kento Kaku) believes his mother is hallucinating but is willing to put up with her hiring Airi if it eases Teiko’s mind. Airi is confident that she can get the vast building un-haunted in a day or so, even though Teiko invites her to stay as long as she likes. (The hotel room is an agreeable change from sleeping in the car.)

Teiko wants Airi to start right away, which is where the title NEVER AFTER DARK comes into play. The spirits, Airi explains, are too strong at night. She also quashes Teiko’s hopes of watching a summoning; Airi needs privacy.

Airi makes contact, but this situation is unfamiliar to her (and to at least some of the audience). Curiosity, stubbornness and guilt go to war with rising and well-warranted fear.

Writer/director Boyle sets up a growing sense of dread with some sharp scares, but he’s also careful to give us humanizing time with Airi and Miku, whose sibling bond is appealing.

The location provides a lot of atmospheric mileage – there are even stone gargoyles at the gates – and the gore is properly unsettling.

We would like to know a little more about Teiko, including why such a social-seeming person decided to live in such a remote (and enormous) place and how she affords it. More, once Airi uncovers some facts, we wonder about the involvement (or lack thereof) of law enforcement.

Hoshi effortlessly convinces us of Airi’s passions and dilemmas. Inagaki is becomingly tart and concerned as Miku. Mutsuo Yoshioka is properly menacing as a stranger, and Kimura and Kaku are appropriate as, respectively, the believer mother and skeptical son.

Boyle provides us with something unconventional, at the same time he keeps us entertained and increasingly apprehensive. NEVER AFTER DARK is a welcome addition to the genre.

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Movie Review: RESIDENT EVIL (2026)

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:39:52 +0000

Rating: R
Stars: Austin Abrams, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis, Paul Walter Hauser
Writers: Zach Cregger & Shay Hatten
Director: Zach Cregger
Distributor: Sony/Columbia Pictures
Release Date: September 18, 2026

When a character in a horror movie pauses to take a better look, and the audience anxiously (as opposed to mockingly) tells him to keep moving, the filmmakers are clearly onto something.

This is the case with RESIDENT EVIL. The first videogame in the RESIDENT EVIL franchise was released in 1996 and went on to spawn a franchise. The first live-action film based on the game, also titled RESIDENT EVIL, was released in 2002, written and directed by Paul W.S. Anderson and starring Milla Jovovich as its amnesiac but fiercely physically capable protagonist Alice. There have been five more movies in that continuity, all starring Jovovich and three directed by Anderson.

Director Zach Cregger, who co-wrote the new RESIDENT EVIL with Shay Hatten, drops the mass-audience actioner seriousness of the other movies in exchange for a tone that is progressively more horrifying but also darkly and deliberately humorous as it goes.

We still have the touchstones of Raccoon City, the nefarious Umbrella Corporation and the inciting incident of a lab accident that unleashes a mutating biohazard. Otherwise, we’re on new terrain here.

Our lead in the new RESIDENT EVIL is Bryan Hodukavich (Austin Abrams), a young medical delivery driver who thinks he’s made his last drop for the night at a local hospital. Then a doctor offers Bryan double pay if he’ll do an long, late run with a “Priority A” package to the hospital in Raccoon City.

Bryan can use the money, so he says yes and even lies that his vehicle is equipped with snow chains (it isn’t) for the three-hour trip up an icy mountain at night.

RESIDENT EVIL registers mainly as a series of set pieces, alongside a fast-moving character study. The filmmakers provide Bryan with a solid motive to keep going and deftly escalate the dangers and the visuals. (Those who have seen the trailer and are curious about the shot with multiple arms clutching a doorframe will not be disappointed by the payoff.) The special effects work extremely well, and Cregger and Co. manage to change things up a bit with every iteration.

There are also some sequences that are downright disturbing. These are impressively thought-out and edited. We are given sufficient time to take in all the implications, and then we’re whirled away from contemplating them too much as events inevitably take a perilous turn.

As for Bryan, it’s not so much that he goes through traditional character development as much he comes to understand himself better. He’s not a natural hero, so in each situation, he’s unsure what he’ll do, and we’re unsure right along with him.

For one thing, Bryan’s altruism and self-preservation (and just plain dislike of inconvenience) are continually at war, and for another, he’s surely one of the klutziest people ever to anchor a non-parody horror movie.

Unlike a lot of the stoic types we often see in, well, RESIDENT EVIL productions, Bryan gets not only terrified but also grossed out and incredulous. Abrams makes him tremendously plausible and human.

If there’s a complaint to be made about RESIDENT EVIL, is that it doesn’t have much plot. That’s hardly a major flaw in this genre, but it’s often what separates the good from the great.

Otherwise, RESIDENT EVIL has tension and various monsters galore, along with a lot of authentic laughs (albeit many of them nervous). It is, as it intends to be, a fleshy, bloody wild ride.

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Movie Review: BURNING (OT)

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:38:41 +0000

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Asanat Edigeeva, Omurbek Izrailov, Kalicha Seidalieva, Zhanilai Isakova, Askar Kachkynbaev, Ruslan Orozakunov
Writers: Aizada Amangeldy & Dastan Madalbekov
Director: Radik Eshimov
Distributor: IndiePix Films
Release Date: September 4, 2026 (IndiePix Unlimited on Prime Video); October 13, 2026 (DVD/VOD/digital)

Here’s something we in the West don’t see every day: a horror movie (or any kind of movie, for that matter) from Kyrgyzstan.

Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is (per Wikipedia) a landlocked country in Central Asia that shares a border on one side with Kazakhstan and on another with China. Despite the proximity to China, the cultural influences seem to be largely Islamic and Russian (the screener provided for review even came with the option of Russian subtitles – BURNING is in Kyrgyz, with English subtitles.)

BURNING is set in a small working-class Kyrgyz town, where everybody has a cellphone, but nobody even blinks when a Muslim cleric and his assistants are called in to exorcise a djinn out of a local man.

Directed by Radik Eshimov and written by Aizada Amangeldy & Dastan Madalbekov, BURNING begins on a night of pouring rain, as firefighters struggle to put out a blaze that has engulfed a suburban house. The firehouse abruptly and mysteriously runs out of water, although it eventually starts up again.

Once they’re sure their own homes are safe, neighbors straggle into the tiny local market to talk about what’s happened. The main point of contention isn’t the event itself – there’s consensus on that – but what led to the conflagration.

BURNING is broken into three formally-labeled sections: Act I: Guilt, Act II: Excuse, and Act III: Reason.

Act I is seen and told from the point of view of neighbor Zhyrgal (Ruslan Orozakunov), who considers the young couple next door, heavily-pregnant Asel (Asanat Edigeeva) and her husband Marat (Omurbek Izrailov), to be sympathetic souls who tragically lost their little boy a year ago. But now Marat has brought his mother Farima (Kalicha Seidalieva) from the village where she lives to stay with Asel while he goes away for a few days.

Per Zhyrgal, Farima is icy and formidable. She performs odd-looking prayer rituals in the yard and is endlessly critical of the trying-hard-to-please Asel. Asel becomes convinced that Farima is trying to steal her unborn child and that Marat is siding with his mother.

Another neighbor, Durus (Askar Kachkynbaev), married to Aisalkyn (Zhanilai Isakova) and parent of their two little daughters, disagrees. In his version, Act II, Farima is a kind and caring woman who truly wants to help her daughter-in-law. Here, Asel is not pregnant but insists that she is. Her actions are such that we understand why Marat thinks she needs an exorcism.

Aisalkyn maintains that she knows the truth, and Act III is her account.

In Act III, BURNING becomes a full-on horror movie, although perhaps not in the way we were expecting. It’s arguable that some of it is over the top, but then again, it’s not unbelievable.

Without knowing much about Kyrgyz norms, it’s hard to determine whether BURNING plays in its homeland as revelatory, or simply a reasonably suspenseful, melancholy drama that invites the audience to determine what’s real.

One main issue is how all three of the tale-tellers are confident they know about conversations and events they are not present for. It seems a little odd that none of them (or anybody else) asks them how they can be so sure of what they didn’t see or hear.

Otherwise, BURNING handles the supernatural with understatement and proficiency. Something uncanny may or may not be occurring, but it’s never so huge that it defies credibility, and never so small that we can entirely discount it.

Edigeeva, Izrailov, and Seidalieva each seamlessly give three wholly different performances as the same character, and Isakova is sensitive as the diffident Aisalkyn.

However we interpret it, there are primal forces and feelings on display. BURNING is intriguing in both its structure and its presentation of a somewhat unfamiliar world. The filmmakers know what they’re doing and, by the end, we find ourselves invested.

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Movie Review: SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:38:23 +0000

Rating: PG
Stars (voices): Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Nina Sosanya
Writers: Mark Burton & Giles Pilbrow, characters created by Nick Park
Directors: Steve Cox & Matthew Walker
Distributor: GKids
Release Date: September 18, 2026

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM subscribes to the notion that mid-September is not too early to celebrate Halloween. Hence the film’s embrace of the holiday and its September 18 theatrical release date.

However, it is manifestly safe for little ones. The movie playfully declares its intentions at the start, with shapes that look scary resolving into the harmless and comical Farmer, his devoted dog Bitzer, Shaun and the rest of the flock, as they get up in the morning at Mossy Bottom Farm.

SHAUN THE SHEEP began as a stop-motion English children’s TV series, a spinoff of WALLACE & GROMIT, that premiered in 2007 and has continued in various forms ever since, including two previous feature films, 2015’s SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE and 2019’s A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON.

It isn’t necessary to have seen any of Shaun’s previous adventures to comprehend what’s happening in SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM. The farm is a safe place for its residents, with no threat of the Farmer selling (or doing anything else) to them.

Indeed, it’s not even required to speak English to take in the narrative, as no one has any dialogue. Human characters make affirmative, negative or quizzical noises that our species are prone to in certain situations; everyone has expressive faces and gestures.

Shaun is especially clever, an inventor and planner who communicates with the other sheep not only in bleats, but via diagrams and drawings.

These inarticulate utterances are still made by actors, including Justin Fletcher as Shaun and his nephew Timmy, John Sparkes as Farmer and Bitzer, and Nina Sosanya as an amiable and curious veterinarian.

Directed by Steve Cox & Matthew Walker and scripted by Mark Burton & Giles Pilbrow, based on characters created by Nick Park, SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM begins with the onscreen introduction “A few days before Halloween …” The sheep have been growing pumpkins to use as decorations for the holiday.

The Farmer, meanwhile, would like to take the local Vet to the town’s Halloween celebration. He’s benignly oblivious to the fact that all the animals on his farm are not only civilized, but generally smarter than he is.

When a Rube Goldberg-style accident decimates the pumpkin patch. Shaun, not wanting the flock to be disappointed, devises a scheme to restore the gourds via a bit of mad science.

One thing leads to another, and soon there’s a giant hairy beast bigfooting his way around the farm and the woods and even the town. It’s up to Shaun to save the day.

Again, even very small children probably won’t be alarmed, as this BEAST shows us exactly what’s happening and why. Minus dialogue, there’s no exposition, but there’s no need for it either. In those rare moments when someone (not the audience) needs something explained, the movie just shows us the start of the information being provided, and then gets on with the action.

And the action is fairly nonstop, with everyone rushing around to restore order, creating more chaos in the process. There are sight gags galore, and more Easter eggs than can be taken in on first viewing. (Don’t worry if you miss one, another is coming right up.)

It’s all very charming, silly but with solid internal logic (and a brief lesson about plastic pollution in the ocean, for those who want some educational benefit). The sheep have a knack for disguise that is unfailingly amusing, and the Beast has a wonderful design.

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM is, like the rest of its creative flock, a product of Aardman Animation. The end credits are miraculously short for an animated feature. This may be due to the style of the animation. The production notes state that this is still stop-motion. While the character design remains distinctly Aardman, the film has an oddly smooth look, a bit more like Pixar than Aardman in movement. It may have made production easier, but it doesn’t feel as tactile as the Aardman of yore.

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM is a genuine family film, easy to understand, fast and funny for youngsters, and deft and quick-witted enough for grown-ups.

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Movie Review: PRACTICAL MAGIC 2

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 04:00:14 +0000

Rating: PG-13
Stars: Sandra Bullock, Nicole Kidman, Joey King, Lee Pace, Maisie Williams, Xolo Maridueña, Solly McLeod, Dianne Wiest, Stockard Channing
Writers: Akiva Goldsman and Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel, based on the novel THE BOOK OF MAGIC by Alice Hoffman
Director: Susanne Bier
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Release Date: September 9, 2026

The new movie PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 is a sequel to the 1998 film PRACTICAL MAGIC, which was adapted from Alice Hoffman’s 1995 novel of the same title.

PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 is also adapted – by director Susanne Bier and screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and Georgia Pritchett and Kelly Marcel – from Hoffman’s novel THE BOOK OF MAGIC, which was published in 2021.

THE BOOK OF MAGIC serves as the finale of Hoffman’s quartet of MAGIC books. Both PRACTICAL MAGIC, the novel and the film, and the novel THE BOOK OF MAGIC and its adaptation PRACTICAL MAGIC 2, deal with the Owens sisters, Sally (Sandra Bullock) and Gillian (Nicole Kidman).

(For those keeping track, Hoffman’s second tome in the series, THE RULES OF MAGIC, published in 2017, chronicles the adventures of Sally and Gillian’s aunts in their younger days, and MAGIC LESSONS, published in 2020, is set in the 1600s, which depicts the origins of the curse afflicting the Owens women.)

In some ways, PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 has a premise that’s a retread of PRACTICAL MAGIC. The curse dictates that any man who is loved by or falls in love with an Owens woman will die a premature death. In the first film, Sally loses her husband, father of their two young daughters, to the curse. She swears off witchcraft, only to need it to rescue Gilly, who is proud of their magical heritage. Sally finds new love, she and Gilly believe the curse is broken, and apparently everyone can live happily and magically ever after.

Well, not so fast. At the start of PRACTICAL MAGIC 2, although Sally and her beloved from the first film married, the curse struck again after all. Broken-hearted, Sally does a graveside spell that at least superficially strips her of all her powers. Sally makes Gilly swear not to tell Sally’s daughters, Kylie and Antonia, that they are hereditary witches. Gilly is extremely reluctant but gives her word.

When Kylie (Joey King) is in college and Antonia (Maisie Williams) is a student doctor, the siblings are tightly bonded to each other, to their mom, to Aunt Gilly, and to great-aunts Jet (Dianne Wiest) and Franny (Stockard Channing), themselves Owens witches who raised Sally and Gilly.

Several things happen almost simultaneously. For one, Jet locates a book that contains the spell that can break the curse – but can’t get the pages to open. For another, Kylie realizes she is in love with her sweet boyfriend Gideon (Xolo Maridueña).

These things combine to force Sally to try to get back in touch with her witchy nature in order to save a loved one.

The best reason to see PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 is the chemistry between Bullock and Kidman, who bring out the best in each other as performers. Without naming movies, both have been saddled with some roles where the jokes and the spark weren’t there. Here, they conjure an energy that feels spontaneous and playful that’s delightful to witness.

While they don’t get as much screen time together as Bullock and Kidman, King and Williams also have an appealing sibling dynamic. Wiest and Channing both have warm authority, Lee Pace charms as an English warlock, and Solly McLeod does well as a groundskeeper with a tale to tell.

Director Bier and the cinematography and design team do a visually entertaining job of keeping the Owens’ world look plausibly enchanting – that is, these are spaces that people who like spirits and the unseen and rich colors (and lots of books) might ensconce themselves in within our world.

There are a number of witchy glitches, though, starting with the basic premise. Did Sally learn nothing from what she and others went through in PRACTICAL MAGIC? Since she knows the curse to be true, shouldn’t she have warned her daughters about it back when they first reached dating age?

The workings of the curse may be a little too mysterious for any viewer who contemplates it. It inevitably came to pass before, but at least Sally had enough time to have two children with her first husband and a wedding with her second. Kylie barely has time to declare her feelings before there’s a big kapow.

Then there are the story mechanics that fuel the inevitable mortal jeopardy. Hoffman may have set these up well in THE BOOK OF MAGIC, but in PRACTICAL MAGIC 2, the peril and how it’s investigated and combatted all seem borrowed from any number of mostly standalone episodes of supernatural TV shows (including but not limited to SUPERNATURAL).

Still, PRACTICAL MAGIC 2 is worth watching. It is pleasing to the eye, and the joy that the cast has in playing squabbling but adoring family is genuinely fun to observe.

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Movie Review: THE UPRISING

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 04:00:07 +0000

Rating: R
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Jamie Bell, Stephen Dillane, Tom Hollander, Cosmo Jarvis, Thomasin McKenzie, Jonny Lee Miller, Woody Norman, Katherine Waterston, Sam Chapman
Writer: Paul Greengrass
Director: Paul Greengrass
Distributor: Focus Features
Release Date: September 10, 2026

For those wondering about the film’s veracity, the 1381 uprising of common folk in England (sometimes referred to as “the peasants’ uprising,” although the term “peasant” wasn’t coined until a century or two later) was a series of real events.

Writer/director Paul Greengrass has dramatized this in THE UPRISING, which is mostly a rousing history lesson, with a little bit of Robin Hood folklore to provide some extra texture and structure.

By 1381, half of England’s population had been wiped out by the Black Plague (another historical fact). In Essex County, Ploughman (Andrew Garfield), who calls himself this because he tills the land with a plough, has lost his wife and two children to the pandemic. Ploughman is physically reasonably healthy, though haunted by loss and thus absolutely miserable.

England is at this juncture ruled by fourteen-year-old King Richard II (Woody Norman), who is prone to nightmares and subject to the influence of his advisors, who include Archbishop Sudbury (Stephen Dillane) and Royal Treasurer Hayles (Tom Hollander). The king’s widowed mother, Countess Joan (Katherine Waterston), worries for her son but does not have her own power within the court.

With the royal coffers running low, the king’s counselors think they can finance the kingdom with taxes. But where will the taxes come from? If the king taxes the merchants, the merchants will want a seat at the table. This leaves the common folk.

Of course, the common folk by and large don’t have any money for themselves, much less for taxes. When a tax collector (Sam Chapman) shows up in Ploughman’s village, Ploughman is prepared to pay, even though he and others are troubled (to put it mildly) by the collector’s financial mandates and the soldiers’ methods of determining the age of young women.

Then the tax collector demands that Ploughman prove his wife and children are dead by paying a death tax, or else pay taxes on them as living household members. This is too much for Ploughman, who lashes out, inspiring others to follow suit, until there’s an actual riot. The tax collector’s men are better-armed, but there are a whole lot more serfs who are much more motivated.

Ploughman is soon approached by Wat Tyler (Cosmo Jarvis), who leads a group of rebels from Kent, where they’ve had similar encounters with tax collectors. Tyler is joined by the “renegade” priest John Ball (Jamie Bell), who has his own acolytes and is convinced their cause is just. Tyler persuades Ploughman to bring his neighbors into the fold.

Together, Ploughman, Tyler and Ball devise a list of demands for the king. These seem basic by today’s standards, but were revolutionary in the fourteenth century. The list includes freedom (the serfs literally legally belonged to whoever owned the land they worked), the right to profit from their own labor, and amnesty from presenting the demands.

But can the king be trusted? Is he a good soul who is being held prisoner by his advisors? If this is the case, Ball thinks the council members should be executed as traitors to the king. If this demand is honored, Tyler feels it will lead straight to disaster.

The king, meanwhile, has more opinions than we might at first imagine.

There are a lot of moving pieces and THE UPRISING is fascinating to watch, as characters change their minds, while huge rivers of people swirl around them.

Greengrass, who as a director often employs a handheld look, gives us a terrifying sense of what it’s like to be in the middle of chaos that is violent and absolute. There are moments when no one can tell who’s on what side and people are so inflamed that there’s no way of knowing who is just trying to get out of the way and who is attacking blindly.

The script, production design, performances and general aesthetic also give us a strong sense of how muddy and back-breaking the lives of the commoners have been. When they commit to taking up arms (lots of farm instruments; Ploughman has a scythe), we viscerally feel their grievance.

There are perhaps a few frames more than necessary of showing groups either on the move or impatiently holding still. It adds to the overall verisimilitude, but the pace could be swifter in places.

Garfield makes a magnetic, sympathetic focal point. Ploughman’s pain gives him integrity; he doesn’t want to be at the forefront of anything but cannot abandon his fellows. Jarvis is solid as a reasonable man who finds himself in an extraordinary position and Bell gives Ball fire that treads the edge of insanity. Thomasin McKenzie has fire as one of Ball’s fervent followers.

There’s some Shakespearean/THE LION IN WINTER intrigue among the nobility that keeps us sitting forward. Norman is excellent and Waterston does a great deal with little dialogue. Dillane and Hollander are very smooth, and Jonny Lee Miller makes the Mayor of London both pragmatic and chilling.

THE UPRISING ends in a manner that’s a little more familiar and a little more fanciful than how it begins. But it’s well-earned and plausibly nods to the roots of a legend.

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