I just watched The Sheep Detectives on Amazon Prime and quite enjoyed it. It’s like Hot Fuzz crossed with Shaun The Sheep. It’s no Paddington, though I think it was hoping to be, but it does a good job with what it has. Family-friendly and worth a look.
Rampage 2018 Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Jeffery Dean Morgan
HBO Max
Weird blend of sci-fi, horror and action. Evil Corporate researchers develop a pathagon that makes animals grow huge.
Fortunately it’s only three animals, wolf, gator, and a gorilla. The world wouldn’t survive 4. 
The movie gets silly and unbelievable when 50 cal, AP rounds shot from military helicopters, and even missiles are ineffective against a 75 ft (est.) gorilla and huge wolf.
The movie is ok if you can accept the premise. I’ve never been too impressed with The Rock’s movies.
Jeffery Dean Morgan is the high point of the film. His acting experience on the Walking Dead shows. He dominates the scenes that he’s in.
6.5 out of 10
The fun thing about Rampage is that it’s based on an old arcade game. You play one of the kaiju. You smash buildings and eat the people in them. That’s the entire game. That they got a film out of this at all is a marvel.
Sounds like a fun arcade game.
Players would enjoy the film a lot more than I did.
Now, this would have made me laugh at the giant ape.
I just finished watching.
The sheep detectives is quite good.
Vesper. A teenage girl lives in a post apocalyptic world after humanity does something that destroys the food supply. She cares for her paralyzed father. One day a mysterious stranger comes to town. The basic premise doesn’t make a ton of sense, but if you can buy into it, it’s very atmospheric and compelling. The altered landscape and bizarre plants are cool, and done with practiical effects and not much money. I think I saw it on Prime.
Midnight Special. A father and son are on the run from both the government and a cult. An old friend of the father is helping. The boy has mystical gifts both pursuing entities want. He is also getting very sick. Who and what he is slowly becomes apparent and whatever you’re thinking, it probably isn’t that. Directed by Jeff Nichols, who also made Mud and Take Shelter. I had no idea they were all made by the same person. It was a Box Office flop, mostly due to poor marketing and bad timing. I enjoyed it. It’s on Netflix.
I saw Midnight Special when it was released in theaters and liked it. (I also saw Mud and Take Shelter but on DVD.)
Wolfman Jack?
Men with Jessie Buckley
Sheep Detectives. Many others have commented on this film already, so I’ll be brief.
The mystery was middling at best, but the… meditations? ruminations? philosophizing? whatever on memory and mortality were… interesting.
Rental Family (2025) on Hulu
A fun entry in the “weird Japan” genre. Brendan Fraser plays a struggling American actor living in Japan who is recruited by an agency that provides fake friends and family members to their clients. Of course, the Fraser character can’t help but get personally invested in the troubled lives of the people he is working with; some who are unaware of the deception. Funny, moving, and more than a little sappy. My wife really enjoyed it.
I’m not sure if you are a knowledgeable or a fan of Conan O’brien, but he actually rented a family while in Japan. There are clips to it on youtube and it is quite amusing.
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I saw this yesterday and really have nothing to add. The description of it above as resembling a Twilight Zone episode is also accurate. I enjoyed it, it was fun and on-point, but don’t expect any nuance.
I liked Mud, I should check this out!
How about a movie that I’m going to see (record) in the immediate future: Slaughterhouse Five. I first saw the movie a very long time ago in college on the smallish screen at the student union building, so not the the fanciest venue. I liked it a lot; several scenes just stayed with me, such as the nice older US soldier executed after finding a porcelain figurine clearing the ruins of the Dresden bombings, the wife’s nagging and death, and of course the “I’m a character in a zoo on an alien planet” with the lucious Valerie Perrine (compare Olivia Rodrigo’s take on SNL 5/2/2026). I just read the book again a few months ago, so I looked to see where I might catch it on a streaming service. Alas, it was nowhere to be found. So it goes.
Finally tonight TCM will be showing it. Yay! I’m surprised that they didn’t air it sooner since Valerie Perrine’s death in March of this year.
Well, this one was strange. My wife recommended it a couple of times, so I finally started it (Netflix), then turned it off after 30 minutes. Seemed like a load of crap. I checked out Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Fresh (Audience reviews), but 77% Fresh from the Critics — with a lot of 1 and 2 star ratings.
It seemed like the critics were my crowd, but I did learn it was based on actual people, and kept plugging. There were ridiculous events (daughter with defibrillator), odd treatment of serious problems, and Hugh Jackman always being Hugh Jackman.
It took me 3 days to fight my way through, but the last 40 minutes were pretty good, mostly due to some well staged musical performances. And Hugh finally sank into his character. The ending was, again, ridiculous — enough so that I found the 2008 documentary (that inspired the film) on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDukMQIz1Sc) and scanned it to get an idea of the actual events.
So the movie was a pain to watch, but the totality of circumstance led me to not only finish it but look up events on Wikipedia and watch some of the documentary it was based on. Umm.. C+.
FWIW, I like early Neil Diamond, going all the way back to Solitary Man.
The new Minions and Monsters movie is… something. I don’t even quite know how to describe it.
Well, at least try?
Okay, here goes.
- I enjoy the Minions franchise and have seen all of it, though that probably indicates a bunch of cinematic immaturity on my part, and this one definitely did not disappoint.
- I grumble sometimes when a show goes “luvvie”, i.e., steers the plot to be all about the business/creative process of film or theater, because showbiz folks are never tired of talking about showbiz, okay whatever. But if your franchise is gonna go luvvie, you might as well lean into it and crank it up to 11, which is what M&M did.
- If you’ve got you some cinematic maturity you will probably recognize and enjoy MASSES of classic movie allusions that got past me. Even I recognized several, and they were fun.
- Was there actually a “gay” Minion couple in this movie? I don’t think Minions have sexuality as we understand it, and they’re all boys and emotionally bonded anyway, but there was definitely a fairly forthright acknowledgement of an individual homoaffectionate relationship. You did not expect that, did you?
- Overall, nutty. Just nutty. But with conviction.
- What with this and The Sheep Detectives (from the Minions creator IIRC), I wonder if we are starting to see some of the artistic effects of widespread legalization of weed. I mean, say what you will about either of them, but they both felt like a movie that somebody wanted to make, as opposed to trying to follow some box-office recipe. “Uninhibited” would be my one-word summary.
Saw it today. And I concur.
I was about fifteen minutes into this movie and I was still trying to figure out if this was the feature or a pre-feature short.
But the eight year old who chose it said she enjoyed it.