Mark McPherson's Blog, page 2

“KPop Demon Hunters” Review

For a premise that seems like it would be drowned in pop culture theatrics, KPop Demon Hunters offers more than zippy slapstick the Sony Animation Studio has mastered. Artist-turned-director Maggie Kang takes a handful of cultural influences, ranging from mythological tales to pop band bravado, and infuses them into an animated film that is as meaningful as it is musical. There are some delightful surprises in this glitzy and goofy picture, for what could’ve easily been commercially safe fluff o...

“Weapons” (2025) Review

Following up on his robust horror debut of Barbarian, Zach Creggar’s Weapons is another wild toying with the genre. He spins a web of various characters around a compelling premise that gets stranger as it continues. Seventeen kids go missing one night after leaving their homes, and nobody can figure out what happened to them. While the mystery alone is a solid staging for psychological drama, Creggar’s script tries to find a way to make this story go into directions so weird that they are sure ...

“Caught Stealing” Review

There are so many unique ingredients in Caught Stealing that it’s almost baffling that someone like Darren Aronofsky turns out a rather bland thriller that tries to be offbeat but ends up off. There are many admirable components in this New York-style stew that mix pompous Russian gangsters, mohawked English punks, and gun-toting Hasidic Jews. Despite how many bloody surprises and absurd humor Aronofsky plunks into his picture, I waited for it to veer out of the mundane lane of being a sufficien...

“Clown in a Cornfield” Review

After helming the highly subversive Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, director doesn’t bring that same satire to the standard slasher stagings of Clown in a Cornfield. But for being the type of story a capable horror director could craft in their sleep, he doesn’t snooze on finding what can make a film like this more rousing than routine. If his previous movie showed you how typical slashers can be turned on their head, this one is meant to show how much fun they can be, even amid the mindless m...

“American Deadbolt” Review

There’s no doubt that American Deadbolt has intensity amid its uncertain situation. Five employees at a restaurant find themselves holding up in the safest room during a mass shooting. It happens on the 4th of July at a restaurant called The American (yes, really). Everything is primed for a stirring one-location thriller about America’s distrust, gun problems, and political divide. Yet, this solid premise plays it too safe by favoring more rote psychological mind games over a bigger political p...

“Fixed” Review

Adult animation has changed a lot in the past 20 years. It used to be a big draw that cartoons started slinging profanity, having sex, and letting the poop and piss fly, spanning from the mindless carnage of Happy Tree Friends to the juvenile CGI of Tripping the Rift. It’s why there’s little surprise that Fixed has been an on/off project since the 2000s, finally unleashed in the era of Sony favoring Genndy Tartakovsky’s projects and Netflix willing to broadcast anything. It’s the type of film my...

“Nobody 2” Review

Nobody 2 might as well be called Nobody: Wisconsin Vacation because it stays true to the protagonist’s motif of taking it easy. It doesn’t really take the material in any new direction or switch up the gritty anti-hero’s focus on masculinity with brushstrokes no less broad. This film starts with bloody and sitting next to a wolf. There is not much of any reason given why the wolf is in that opening scene, but the film’s brutal gusto is ever-present to always ask questions like “Do y...

“She Rides Shotgun” Review

She Rides Shotgun fits snugly into the father-daughter dynamic of thrillers that can lean into the heartfelt and the hurt. Although armed with a decent degree of corruption, drugs, and white supremacist antagonists to fuel its plot, this is familiar ground that is only as stable as the materials used. Like the retreads of romantic comedies, the performances and atmosphere matter most. On that level, this film runs like a well-oiled machine.

melts into the role of Nate, a former ...

“War of the Worlds” (2025) Review

Screenlife might not be the best genre for adapting H. G. Wells’s classic sci-fi story, The War of the Worlds. This fascinating story of an alien invasion highlighted the grotesqueness of imperialism and the evolution of organisms, big and small. But how much of that can be staged through a computer browser? As it turns out, none of those greater themes are present, replaced with Amazon product placements, bland alien designs, and characters so ill-defined that they feel less like people and mor...

“The Naked Gun” (2025) Review

The Naked Gun movies have always been like a machine gun of jokes, firing a perpetual spread of visual gags and silly dialogue for the highest amount of laughs per minute. After decades of being dormant, director Akiva Schaffer (Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping) picks up this old franchise and fires with impeccable aim and precision. He stays true to the fast-paced writing and direction of the Zucker brothers with tongue-in-cheek delivery and cartoonish gags involving claw machines and snowmen...