Author: troubledproductions

Weapons (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: When all but one child from the same classroom mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance

There’s a fine line between comedy and horror. Something that some see as comedic will be seen by others as utterly horrific: clowns, that scene from IT: Chapter 2 where black sludge was vomited over a kid, my face. I’m saying that now because there were moments during Weapons where I wasn’t entirely sure whether their comedic nature was intentional or not. I’m going to give writer and director Zach Cregger the benefit of the doubt and say it was. I think Creggar will one day create an all-time classic horror comedy. He has a history of comedy, and his horror movies have been very well-received, but he seems to be toning down the comedic elements, which means the moments which are there stand out more and seem out of place.

That’s all very negative, I know. I did like Weapons. I watched it in the worst possible way; in a cinema screen with only two other people in, both of whom talked a lot and laughed randomly. The fact that Weapons had that work against it, and still came out with me having a favourable opinion of it, says a lot. Is it going to end up being among my top films of the year? Probably not. To me, it was a solid 8/10. If it wasn’t for Sinners, it would be the best horror film of the year.

So why didn’t I like it? I’m not entirely sure. I just never fully bought into the premise. Aside from the meeting, it didn’t feel like a town that was in shock. I know, life goes on, etc. But there would be some change in behaviour; increased police presence, parents putting locks on the inside of their doors which their kids can’t open. A classroom of kids goes missing, and at no point does the question of “what if this happens again?” get raised. They’re angry towards Justine, but that’s only specific characters. Shop staff still serve her as usual, she doesn’t even change her routine and get her shopping done online. She drinks at a bar, and nobody accosts her. Compare this to the recent Halloween trilogy, which slid into shitness in the final one, but otherwise did a fantastic job of portraying a town haunted by events. Individually, people do seem paranoid and worried. But as a town? Not so much. It’s almost like they don’t care that much. Which would explain the ending, actually, when an old woman is being chased by a group of feral kids, breaking through windows, going through people’s houses, etc, and not a single adult reacts or tries to stop it.

Yes, I am aware I’m being overly picky. But that’s only because if it wasn’t for that, Weapons could be an all-time great. It’s tense, doesn’t shy away from gore when it needs to, but doesn’t depend on it. It has characters you empathise with, and a narrative that draws you in. The music is incredible, as are the performances. Julia Garner is fast becoming one of my favourite performers to see on screen in horror movies. She has a great “trembling face on the edge of tears but not quite crying” facial acting. It turns out Benedict Wong can be f*cking terrifying when he needs to be. He’s come a long way from 15 Storey’s High, which, if you’ve seen it, you’d have never guessed he’d become a star. The real star is Amy Madigan, who is brilliant.

In summary, very, very good. The more distance I have from it, the more its themes and ideals have stayed in my head, and I’ve come to appreciate them. But it could be so much better.

The Roses (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Theo and Ivy are a married couple who are slowly starting to resent each other.

I have not read the book this movie is based on, and I also haven’t seen the original 1989 adaptation. So this review will not contain any “but in the original version they did this” or “in the book this character had a different job, ruined!”. I’ll be taking this on its own merits. On its own merits, this is a damn fine movie. The laughs start early on and don’t stop until the credits roll. That’s not hyperbole; the fade to credits is, in itself, a joke.

One of the most exciting things for me about this was the knowledge that statistically, there’s a high chance that people went in not knowing what it was. They saw Cumberbatch, they saw Colman, and thought it would be a sweet romantic comedy, not knowing how angry and bitter it would get. Meanwhile, I had seen the trailer, so I knew that it was going to be cynical and spiteful and more cold-hearted than a polar bears internal organs that have been stuffed in the freezer for transplant purposes. I would sit there in the knowledge that I knew what to expect, whereas they did not. Oh, how I would mock those fools. But, much like every web comic on April Fools Day 2016, perhaps I am the fool. Because, yes, this is somewhat mean-spirited and bitter (especially in the final scenes, which I’m not a fan of how extreme they got), it’s also incredibly heart-warming.

Crucially, The Roses doesn’t make them hate each other that quickly. We see how their relationship started, then see them together and happy before the cracks start showing, and even longer before those cracks become big enough to cause structural damage. It means that the trailers were somewhat misleading, but I preferred it like this. It meant that we actually wanted them to be together. No matter how funny their barbs are (and they are), there is still a small part of you that feels disappointed that it’s come to this. It’s not like you’re watching two characters in a farce gradually descend into silliness, it’s more like you’re watching two friends tear into each other while you’re helpless to watch.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of Chekov’s Gun. Essentially, it’s a narrative device that says elements in a story must be necessary to justify their inclusion. For example, if you introduce a gun in the first act, then that gun must be fired later on. Obviously, not EVERYTHING, if a character has a cup of tea, it doesn’t mean you then have to reveal that without hot leaf water they will die. But if you make a point to specifically mention and highlight that the character is drinking tea, audiences would be forgiven for expecting that to be an important plot point later on. Sometimes this is done incredibly subtly; a spy movie will feature the character being handed a gadget while being told, “Now this device is lethal to people called Keith”, then the villain will turn out to be someone called Keith. When it’s done well, it’s a sight to behold, and few films have done it as well as The Roses. We’re introduced to so many things that we can easily think of as just symbols of excess and AMERICA, but then turn out to be vital in the third act.

It’s not all great. I wasn’t a fan of just how sociopathic they both turned at the end. Which is weird, as some of the negative reviews I’ve read have highlighted those moments as their favourite parts. It just felt like a huge leap from “flicking eyeballs” (not sexy slang) to “aiming a gun at”. There are also moments where it does feel like it’s repeating itself, and some of their friends should have noticed something was amiss earlier.

In general, though? I enjoyed it. It’s not as cynical as I expected, but it has bite when it needs to. Also, it’s good that a film like this basically centres around the message “FFS, communicate!”.

The Toxic Avenger (2023) Review

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Quick Synopsis: A janitor is turned into a superhero when he’s dumped in toxic waste.

Gonna get this out of the way now; I was not a fan of this movie. I know quite a few people are, and the reasons they like it are likely to be the same reasons I don’t: the tone, the shoddy quality of the filmmaking, the feeling that it’s outdated. That’s fine, there is no right or wrong when it comes to liking a movie; it’s entirely subjective (unless you like the Ice Cube version of War Of The Worlds, which was objectively bad).

I’ve always been interested in works made by Troma, ever since I heard about Tromeo and Juliet, but this is the first time I’ve actually watched one, and I have to believe the others are different from this. My main problem is that it feels deliberate. It feels like the cinematic equivalent of buying pre-torn clothes; a lot of effort put in to seem low effort. Some of the editing choices are a bit weird, and I feel like the soundtrack could have been better (with two notable musical choices which are pretty damn perfect).

It has a unique look, but I can’t quite figure out how. It doesn’t look like it’s been heavily altered in post-production, but there’s something weirdly crystal clear about the visuals; everything looks sharp and real, with great focus work. There are good performances too; you can tell that everybody is having a lot of fun, and while I do criticise this film, there is a small part of me that is jealous of the obvious camaraderie that everybody involved in it has.

This film is gory as hell, kind of. Heads get chopped off, guts are displayed, there’s so much blood that even track 8 of AC/DC’s 1979 album Highway To Hell would say “yeah, we get the point”. Mostly, there are times when it feels weirdly restrained; when it cuts away from violence that is in no way more violent than what we just saw. There’s also one death that I think should have been more violent. When Winston kills a band onstage, almost every death is violent and brutal, full of blood and gore. But then he kills the only female member of the band by electrocution. It’s hard to believe that that was an accident; it feels like the director made a conscious decision to shy away from showing extreme violence against women, even if they have been responsible for deaths. For a film based around chaos and gore, it feels weirdly conservative and politically correct. It is consistent with the tone, though, all of the deaths happen to truly terrible people. There’s no attempt to humanise the villains, which is refreshing. If someone is dumping toxic waste into lakes, they shouldn’t be humanised because they are vile, evil scum who deserve life in prison. No matter how violent and gory this movie is, it does have heart. Not just in the film itself, but the fact that the studio has declared it will wipe out (at a minimum) $5 million of medical debt. That is admirable.

As I said, there is quite a bit to like about this. And I’m glad it was made. I saw it in a cinema with (at most) 8 other people in, on a cold, damp Saturday night after a 6-day run at work which left me exhausted both physically and mentally. That’s not the right place to watch this. You want to watch it either at home with your friends while you’re drunk/high as fuck, or in a room full of people who are excited and audibly reacting. So yes, this is a negative review, but with caveats.

War Of The Worlds (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Aliens attack! But this time, we witness it all through computer screens.

To fill you in on my non-film-watching life, I work retail. A few weeks ago, I was putting some clothes up and turned around, where I witnessed someone facing away from the store, pants around his ankles, pissing in the doorway. It was disgusting, vile, and rude. Yet I would rather have that happen once every hour of my working life than ever watch this film again. Trust me, that’s being kind. This is the worst thing I’ve seen all year, and I’ve seen the news.

First off, War Of The Worlds is timeless; its themes and messages are still relevant today. Updating it adds nothing. I should clarify, it’s not “updated” in a “same basic story, but takes place in modern times”, I mean, they completely change the themes. The aliens no longer invade Earth for colonialistic reasons; they invade for food. This could still work and possibly tie into the themes. Have the humans discover that they are to aliens what animals are to us; nothing but food and sustenance. You could even have a scene of a character discovering humans being harvested. WOTW (What-wah) doesn’t do this. Instead, the aliens eat, actually, I’m going to need to pause here to gather my thoughts because it’s so damn stupid. The aliens eat data. Because aliens must know my search history.

The other change is that the aliens are no longer defeated by a common virus, which means that it was only luck that the humans won in the book. Here, they’re defeated by a computer virus; so it’s not luck; it’s intentional defence, which, again, destroys the very point of the source material. It’s so stupid, and it’s not even original; it’s the same as Independence Day, one of the biggest films of all time.

The notion of “destroyed by a computer virus” isn’t even the stupidest part of how they’re defeated. Essentially, the world is saved by someone ordering something on Amazon Prime. By sheer coincidence, this movie is available on Amazon Prime. Side note, for this to work, we have to believe that the NSA don’t allow thumb drives, but they do allow random drones to enter their airspace. Although it’s not as though anybody can stop him from using a thumb drive anyway, as there seems to be nobody else in his building. A whole building with one person fighting cyber terrorism doesn’t feel safe. I imagine that would make it very easy for people to infiltrate and blackmail that person.

The idea of an alien invasion being witnessed on a computer screen is intriguing and opens up a lot of possibilities. But it doesn’t work. Part of that is because the film is so low-budget can’t show us what it wants to. Although I guess it’s nice to know that “filming yourself instead of the actual interesting thing” is something that even trained NSA agents do. Not as though filming the actual threat could prove useful, just keep filming your face as you run. That’s definitely what trained professionals would do.

When you see stuff like that, it really takes you out of it. As do the terrible effects. The weather effects, in particular, are reminiscent of something from a PS2 game rather than a modern feature. The news reports also feel incredibly fake. It’s hard to clarify exactly why, but none of them feel genuine. It’s not the logos or the people, it’s the general feel of them; they feel very amateur.

The characters? Terrible. The lead character of Will may actually be an idiot, and the way he cyberstalks his daughter is weird. This is actual dialogue:

His son (certified computer genius): “I have information you might want to know”

Ice Cube: “Not now!”

If, in the middle of a serious event that is mysterious, someone says, “I have information you might want to know”, it would be a good idea to actually listen to them to see if it’s helpful, and to make the film at least 30 minutes shorter.

The characters might work if the performances were good. Spoilers, they’re not. Ice Cube just scowls, with less depth than the shallow end of a baby’s swimming pool. It feels like he wasn’t actually told what he was supposed to be reacting to, just told to make generic faces. It’s not just him; Michael O Neil looks bored, giving a truly terrible performance.

You may be morbidly curious about watching this. Don’t. Don’t watch it, watch good movies instead. Watch films you want to see more of. Don’t watch badly made pieces of shit. Don’t watch movies which pretend to be warning against the dangers of government surveillance, but then also praise Amazon and Facebook, if their data handling methods are squeaky clean. This movie is terrible, and it breaks Prime’s positive review streak on this website.

Nobody 2 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: An assassin goes on holiday, and people die.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first Nobody. It was action-packed, it was fun, and it was short enough that it didn’t outstay its welcome. In that aspect, Nobody 2 succeeds. It does all the important stuff well, and carries on the legacy of the first movie.

There are some aspects in which it’s not quite as successful. The action scenes aren’t as memorable as those in the first one; none of them come close to the bus scene. It’s also slightly overstuffed, particularly in the villain department. There is one definite BIG bad, but they’re introduced after we’ve already had issues with everybody else, so they’re not given as much focus. This may seem like sacrilege, but I didn’t like Sharon Stone in this. Her performance felt so hammy that I witnessed a little felt frog marry it. It felt like she was giving a performance, not that she got lost in the role. The background characters aren’t as well-written as they could be. With some aspects of them feeling overpowered and unrealistic, especially when they hold their own in fights with people they really shouldn’t.

Now, onto the upside, very little of that previous paragraph actually matters. You’ll be entertained throughout anyway. The action scenes, like I said, aren’t quite as good as the first one, but they are still very good. They’re set up beautifully. Things are mentioned throughout the film that later become relevant in a later scene when they are used to kill people. There are some great music choices, varied too. Cliff Richard’s songs fit alongside Celine Dion and The Offspring; all the choices make sense, although it would be an incredibly weird soundtrack if you played all of them together.

What Nobody 2 does better than the first one is set up a potential future. There are so many plot threads that are just waiting for a future film to unravel them. It also avoids the trap that people think John Wick fell into: becoming overly long and too steeped in lore. Nobody 2 is a quick 90 minutes, meaning it never overstays its welcome. For people who like the action of the John Wick movies (which you should, they’re awesome) but actually have social lives, which means they can’t spend an entire day watching a franchise, Nobody 2 is the perfect substitute. When the film ends, you want more. On the one hand, that’s delightful. On the other hand, there is a small part of you that feels unsatisfied, like you’ve had a delicious burger, but you’re still hungry.

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Gilmore returns to the sport of golf since his retirement after winning his first Tour Championship, to finance his daughter’s ballet classes

I will admit, I loved Adam Sandler’s movies as a teen. But as I’ve grown up, I’ve come to find his characters a bit petulant and annoying. Plus, his films have a weird attitude to women; with most of the love interests being more like mothers than lovers. His characters are kind of embarrassing to watch, especially since they all share the same flaws, and the lesson they learn is normally “everyone else is the problem, you shouldn’t change”. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening of this movie; where he kills his wife accidentally, then his life falls apart; not because of grief, not because of trauma (in fact, the idea that he killed his wife playing golf doesn’t play into the narrative as much as it should, there’s no “but I can’t play golf, golf killed my wife” moments), but because he sucks as an adult and has no idea how to pay bills.

If you can still watch ’90s Sandler and enjoy it, then you will like this. There are a lot of callbacks to the original, which fans will appreciate. On the downside, the movie doesn’t trust you to remember the first film, so a lot of callbacks are prefaced by flashbacks to what is about to be referenced. That’s to be expected from a modern Sandler film; as are the other main faults: the narrative stopping so a character can make a joke, repetitiveness, and the insistence of Sandler putting his friends and family in major roles.

It’s when it’s not traditional Sandler that HG2 shows its best. The message of “no, tradition should be upheld instead of being ignored for something new and flashy” is unexpected. Also unexpected is the redemption arc of Shooter. It feels very in-character, though. Part of the reason he was the villain in the first movie was that he hated how Happy treated the game. So there’s zero reason for him to go along with a plan to change the game to the extent the villain in this movie suggests. The tributes to the cast members who have passed are genuinely sweet whilst remaining tonally consistent with the franchise. I also enjoyed one of the early golf games, where Happy is a drunken mess. That moment is helped by the people he’s playing with, who are played by Eric Andre and Margaret Qualley. It does kind of suck that those characters are never seen again. There are multiple moments where I feel they could have belonged. The villains’ super team of golfers are also an interesting group of characters, who are less developed than an improv comics stand-up set.

In summary, if this came out 20 years ago, I’d have loved it. As it is? It’s just kind of sad. Especially when it shows hints of being a much better movie.

Freakier Friday (2025) Review

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Quick synopsis: Two decades after an identity crisis, Anna’s blended family faces new challenges. Tess and Anna discover their past may be repeating with the next generation.

I know I’ve seen the 2003 version of Freaky Friday, but my main memory of it is that it had a Halo Friendlies song in it, guitar-focused female-vocal pop punk is my jam. I remember the basic plot, and the two leads, but that’s pretty much it. Added to that, I have a feeling that “straight male in his late 30s” is not the target audience for this. So I was prepared for my feelings towards this movie to be “it’s okay” at best, a solid 5/10. Thoroughly okay, but not for me.

Yup, that’s wrong, this film is good. Really good. It’s smart, funny, and genuinely heartwarming. It does a good job of catching newcomers up to speed with what happened in the first movie, without repeating itself so much that it bores fans who can remember what happened. I recognised enough “hey, it’s a reference” moments that I get the feeling fans of the 2003 version will get more out of it than those who haven’t watched it. I don’t know why I was surprised; it’s directed by Nisha Ganatra, who also directed Late Night, which was one of my favourite films of 2019. She knows how to do comedy, plus has a talent for getting the best out of actors, both established (Emma Thompson in Late Night, Curtis in this) and new.

It’s not said enough, but Jamie Lee Curtis is incredible. She NAILS her performance here. Body swap movies can be difficult for performers, as you need to behave in such a way that the audience never forgets the premise; they need to remember, “Okay, that’s so-and-so in that body”. There’s not a single moment where Curtis slips up. Lohan? She’s good, but there are a few moments where its easier to forget than it should be that she’s been bodyswapped. Julia Butters and Sophia Hammons fare slightly better, but that’s mainly because they’re given more to do physically.

The supporting cast also does their job. Even those only in a few scenes (Vanessa Bayer, X Mayo) give such strong performances that you wouldn’t object to them coming back in a sequel. I want to give particular recognition to Sherry Cola and Santina Muha for only being in one scene each, but being incredibly memorable, especially Muha as I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen her in anything, and her performance was so good in this that my brain automatically cast her in the book I’m currently reading.

There aren’t many “laugh uproariously” moments, but you’d need a heart of stone to not be charmed and amused by many of the moments here. I have a few quibbles with the script, the main one being the opening. The opening is fine, it does its job well, and I have no issues with it on its own. But there’s a montage of Anna and Eric’s relationship developing and growing that would have been PERFECT for the opening credits. With that in mind, it’s difficult to not see some moments as a bit superfluous. I’m not asking for all of it to be cut, but you could easily get it down to 5-10 minutes and THEN have the relationship play out. There are other moments where you could poke holes in the logic or storytelling. But, to be honest, you don’t really want to. It’s such a lovable film that doing that would feel weirdly cruel.

Not amazingly fantastically brilliant, but very good. Although “Lindsey Lohan tries to stop a father marrying someone she doesn’t approve of”? You sneaked a Parent Trap sequel past us, didn’t you?

The Naked Gun (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Frank Drebin Jr. attempts to stop a fiendish billionaire (is there any other kind?) from activating their P.L.O.T device.

This is the dumbest movie I’ve ever seen (editor’s note: this review was written before I watched the 2025 Ice Cube-led War Of The Worlds), it’s ridiculous, it’s cliche, and it’s over the top. It’s also f*cking brilliant. I’m a huge fan of the original trilogy (and the TV show, which is sorely underrated), so I went into this with a mixture of excitement and nervousness. Excited because I love movies like this – dumb, funny, and weird oddness. Studios and general audiences don’t feel the same way, so they’re not made as much as they should. The last film I can remember which even came close to that chaotic energy was probably Bottoms. But nervous because I was concerned it would be less like the original movies, and more like the execrable “[WORD] Movie” parodies that plagued the 2000s. Movies which forgot to have jokes, and instead had references, or if they did have jokes, they were jokes that they didn’t realise were in the thing they were mocking.

Also, there was a chance I could love this movie and still have it be a bad cinema experience. What if I were in a busy screening and it’s met with silence? Something like that is made much better by being in a room with others who are laughing. If I were the only one who enjoyed it, it would definitely sour me somewhat.

Not to worry, the audience I was with found it hilarious, as has everybody else I know who has seen it. It seems to be liked by both audiences and critics, which is always a good sign. It helps that everybody involved clearly loves the project. The core cast is almost perfect; Liam Neeson is much better at comedy than many people assume he is. He’s not a “My dogs got no nose, how does he smell? Terrible” type comedic actor; he’s a “I am serious in the face of the ridiculous” comedy actor, much like Leslie Nielsen was back in the day. Pamela Anderson is great as the sex symbol female lead made famous by Priscilla Presley (who makes a cameo). Paul Walter Hauser feels somewhat underused, and I was disappointed that the O.J. Simpson reference in the trailer was the only appearance of that character (named Not Nordberg Jr.).

Now, is it as funny as the originals? Kind of. When it’s funny, it does match the original. But it’s not as funny as often. That’s not me saying it’s not packed with jokes, it is. But the original was like being shot with a machine gun of jokes of various types, where it felt like every sign or prop was a joke. There are multiple moments where it feels like there’s a comedic gap, normal dialogue or backgrounds in which the writers could have squeezed more jokes in. Compared to most movies? It’s full. But compared to Naked Gun? You can definitely see opportunities, especially with some jokes that don’t have payoffs. There’s a prison break scene (which was in the trailer) that’s never followed up on. There’s a violent fight at the end, which would have been perfect for some of the escaped convicts to make a re-appearance. They could have squeezed in some cameos to make sure you remember those who broke out. That’s not a major criticism, but it definitely feels like a wasted opportunity.

The major loss between this and the original is the credits. The opening credits of the original are iconic, to the point where they’re used in the ending credits here. There’s no attempt to do a version here. If they did, yes, it would have come off as pandering. But it’s not replaced by anything either. There’s a very quick “title won’t fit on screen” gag, but no attempt to make the opening credits set the tone. Even the first two Deadpool movies had more suitable opening credits.

Like I said, those are all very minor issues, though. This film is great and I already miss it.

The Bad Guys 2 (2025) Review

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Quick Synopsis: Reformed criminals are forced to return to a life of crime.

I have to be honest, I can’t really remember that much from the first one. I know I’ve seen it, and I know I reviewed it. But none of the characters really stuck with me. My main memory of it is how it had the bad luck to be released very close to Zootopia/Zootropolis whilst exploring familiar themes.

The sequel has the advantage of being released roughly 4 months before the Zootopia sequel, so it doesn’t have the same comparison issues. It’s also much better paced, starting with a heist instead of a conversation. The initial heist is surprisingly well written. Not just in terms of the action making sense in terms of physics and geography, but it also showcases all of the gang’s talents. It could easily get away with “this is Ms. Tarantula, expert computer hacker”, but instead it just shows her expertly hacking. This is incredibly smart as it means that people who watched the first one recently won’t feel like it’s repeating itself, but people who haven’t watched it recently still get to know their personalities and skills. I admire the scriptwriting that goes into that.

I admire other parts of the script less. It feels very episodic, it doesn’t flow from one scene to the next, instead it feels like there’s a definite STOP at certain points, seemingly destined for a theme tune and a “How will our fishy friend find his way out of this aquarium of agony? Find out next week!” voiceover. Some of those moments are better than others. The section at the Lucha Libre show is a particular lowlight. If you’ve been on the internet, you may have seen people point out how impossible one of the Fast and Furious movies is because it has a scene that takes place on a runway, and for it to work in the film, it would need to be miles long because of how long the scene is. This has a similar issue. Characters run for far too long in a small ring without hitting the ropes. It’s a minor issue, but once I noticed it, it was impossible to ignore.

It’s a shame, as that moment could have been brilliant. The space-bound sections are much better, and it’s clear that the writers did their research on how rocket launches occur in stages. Yes, it’s incredibly unrealistic in parts, but mainly for the rule of fun. The action scenes on the space station make tremendous use of the situation, and it’s genuinely difficult to see how they’re going to top that in the sequel.

Overall, I liked this more than the first one. The first was too obviously indebted to its influences; this feels like its own movie; it has an identity that the first one didn’t. The bringing back of Professor Marmalade felt weird, though. Had some funny moments, but it felt needless. Also, there were moments where it felt like this was trying to appeal to furries, especially with the way they portray Kitty Kat. A bit uncomfortable, not gonna lie.

Freaky Tales (2024) Review

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Quick Synopsis: An NBA star, a corrupt cop, a female rap duo, teenage punks, neo-Nazis and a debt collector embark on a collision course in 1987 Oakland.

I think this is the first anthology film I’ve reviewed. I have to be honest, it’s difficult to figure out how to review a film like this. Do I review each one individually, or take it as a whole? I’ve decided to try to do each segment in turn. If it were something like the VHS series, where there’s A LOT of segments, I’d do it as a whole (or just not watch it), but with only four segments? That seems doable. This will be more stream-of-consciousness than most of my reviews, so fair warning for that.

Strength In Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back

Ah, this really made me wish we had a local music community. There’s so much togetherness displayed among the characters. Jack Champion has played the worst character in at least two movies (Avatar: The Way Of Water and Scream VI), but his performance in this shows that it was ALL due to bad writing. He is charming and sweet in this. I love Tina, though. Ji-Young Yoo is full of energy and repressed anger.

I appreciate that in an age where “don’t be a dick” is taken as “woke political correctness”, I appreciate how this segment (the entire film, in fact) is not subtle. This is not subtle, one character outright says “the rules don’t apply to nazis” when they discuss their “no hate” rule. But when we have politicians outwardly saying they want to put the unemployed in concentration camps, we can’t afford to be subtle. I have seen one person say that the portrayal of nazi’s in this segment made them “cartoonishly evil”, especially when they beat up someone on crutches. Got news for ya, that’s far from the worst thing Nazi’s did to people.

The fight itself is brutal. Doesn’t shy away from the blood and anger. It plays up some of it by making it slightly comic booky, but you are left in no doubt that these are real people (and nazi’s). The message here, “You can’t afford to be a pacifist if you’re being attacked”, is vital in 2025 (and yes, that is depressing). The relevance and importance of the message wouldn’t matter if the other components weren’t good. Obviously, the soundtrack is brilliant, with tracks from Operation Ivy and Black Flag suiting both the tone and the time. The visuals are pretty fun too, a standard conversation between the two characters is made visually interesting with animated overlays (very similar to Ninjababy, if you ever saw that). There’s some great stuff with aspect ratio too, with the frame pushing in at the start, making the whole thing seem like an 80’s VHS tape (that’s helped by the slight grain to the footage too). On the downside, the grainy nature of the visuals does make it difficult to see things at times. But I suppose it’s in a dark room, everybody is wearing black, so if you combine that with the 80’s filter, it’s difficult to see how it could be brighter without looking fake.

My other problem was a singular scene just before the chaos started. There’s a conversation between two punks outside when the nazi’s arrive, it feels stilted and is the only part that doesn’t feel real. If I were told “these two actors won a competition/are the crew”, I’d believe it.

Don’t Fight The Feeling

It’s certainly a choice that the nazi story was followed by a story about two black women. Just to showcase how shitty the 80s were, there wasn’t just racism, there was also sexism. Their race never drives the narrative, though, I suppose if it did, then it would have risked repeating the lessons from the first section.

It’s not just the themes; tonally, this is completely different. That’s what you want from a film like this. You want to showcase the diverse group of characters, and it’s no point doing that if every section feels the same. There are connecting themes and settings, but they’re not even in the same genre or sharing a visual technique. The soundtrack is also completely different, with this section taking on more of a hip-hop slant.

It’s not as satisfying an end, though. They defeat a battle rapper who only hired them to humiliate them. His rhymes are hateful and sexist as fuck, and he deserves to be beaten. But, you don’t get the feeling that he’s learned his lesson. He’s still going to be misogynistic as fuck, just not to these two particular women.

Born To Mack

After the youth-oriented previous chapters, it’s a surprise that the opening of this consists of Tom Hanks and Pedro Pascal. I knew Pedro was in this, genuinely had no idea Tom Hanks was. Explains all the references to the previous segments made to him.

There’s a “but you’re the owner, you’ve always been the owner” spooky fake-out was brilliant and I loved it. This is a much more deliberate and slower story than the previous two. It’s strange, it has the most story, more happens (and it’s certainly the only one so far that you could imagine becoming a feature on its own), but it somehow feels like it stagnates more. In the previous sections, not much happened, but it happened quickly. If the previous two were sprints, this is a marathon. It’s not quite as entertaining, but ot is much more fascinating.

The Legend Of Sleepy Floyd

And we’re back with the nazi cunts (fuck off). This is an excellent culmination of everything we’ve seen. The sci-fi undertones become more obvious, with the references to telekinesis finally becoming meaningful. This is how the final section of an anthology should be; the previous scenes all crashing together in a magnificently meaningful coda.

I can see why people would hate this movie. I found it oddly charming. The opening leads you to think that the science-fiction elements may be more prevalent than they actually are, but that’s a minor issue. If you take it with no expectations, it’s a collection of stories which you’ll love to watch.