THE WEEKEND WARRIOR May 10, 2025
GASOLINE RAINBOW, LAST STOP IN YUCA COUNTY, POOLMAN, MOTHER OF THE BRIDE
For the second week in a row, we have a major wide release, which I’ve seen and will review separately from this column, and a movie that I probably won’t have a chance to see.
The former is KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (20th Century), which I’ve reviewed here, while the latter is the spoof comedy NOT ANOTHER CHURCH MOVIE (Briarcliff), starring Jamie Foxx, Mickey Rourke, Vivica A. Fox, Jasmine Guy, written and directed by Johnny Mack. I mean, the tagline alone should give you some idea what to expect: “Taylor Pherry is commanded by God to write a movie inspired by his crazy, dysfunctional family, but the Devil has his own devious plans in this hilarious spoof comedy.” Kevin Daniels plays “Pherry” while Foxx plays God and Rourke is the Devil. I haven’t even seen the trailer for this, but considering how bad Tyler Perry movies usually are, I’m not sure a spoof of them can be much better.
Also, starting on Friday up at Film at Lincoln Center is the 31st African Film Festival, which is not one of the series I normally cover, but I’ve heard some good things about some of the films from my pal, Steve Kopian of Unseen Films.
THE BOX OFFICE CHART
Being that this weekend is Mothers’ Day, we could see a few movies that might interest mothers get a nice spike on Sunday, including The Fall Guy and Challengers.
1. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (20th Century) - $53.6 million N/A
2. The Fall Guy (Universal) - $16.2 million -42%
3. Challengers (MGM) - $4.2 million -45%
4. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace (Lucasfilm/Disney) - $3.1 million -63%
5. Tarot (Sony) - $2.5 million -62%
6. Civil War (A24) - $2.3 million -45%
7. Godzilla x Kong: A New Empire (Warner Bros.) - $2.3 million -48%
8. Not Another Church Movie (Briarcliff) - $2.2 million N/A
9. Kung Fu Panda 4 (Universal) - $1.6 million -36%
10. Unsung Hero (Lionsgate) - $1.5 million -50%
I guess this week’s “Chosen One” will have to be…
GASOLINE RAINBOW (MUBI)
I wasn’t really familiar with the Ross Brothers, Bill and Turner, although they’re a couple DIY indie filmmakers, apparently, and the only reason that this caught my eyes was that a special preview of it was shown at my favorite local arthouse, the Metrograph, as a members event. (If you haven’t been paying attention, I highly recommend becoming a member if you love repertory/indie/documentary, and foreign films, because between the members events, the discounts, and the digital At Home streaming service, it’s a damn good deal at $50 a year or $5 a month.)
Anyway, onto the Ross Brothers’ movie, which follows five high school friends (Tony Aburto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly and Makai Garcia) as they go on a trip across Oregon together to celebrate their senior year. The film reminds me so much of movies like Larry Clarks’ Kids, since it does a good job capturing the current youthful energy and spirit that ends up being quite infectious.
For the most part, the film follows the five main characters as they encounter others on their journey and hit a series of hurdles. I honestly couldn’t figure out if the Ross’ found non-actors all-around, and used a lot of improv that they edited together, or how they were able to capture such naturalness on film, but I enjoyed this more than I normally enjoy anything cinema verité.
This is very much a discovery film in that it’s going to have trouble getting people interested without known stars involved, but it feels like there are many stars in the making on display. Hopefully, people will give this a chance based on my own enjoyment of it, because the Ross Brothers have created something quite special and original, but also of the times without seeming pretentious about it.
Rating: 7.5/10
Gasoline Rainbow opens in select theaters on Friday, including New York’s IFC Center (where the Ross Brothers will be doing QnAs), before it hits the MUBI streaming service on May 31. You can also read a cool interview with the Ross’ as part of Metrograph’s journal.
THE LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY (Well Go USA)
Francis Gallupi’s indie crime-drama, which debuted at Fantastic Fest last September, stars Jim Cummings (The Wolf of Snow Hollow) as a traveling knife salesman who stops at a remote Arizona gas station to fill up, but gets stranded there waiting for the fuel truck, soon to be joined by two bank robbers and others who hole up at the local diner, unable to leave.
While I’m not a huge fan of Cumming as an actor – only seen a few of his films as a director – this isn’t as much his show as it is an ensemble piece, and that helps it greatly, since Gallupi has put together a pretty decent cast of actors, few of whom I knew before, other than Faizon Love and Gene Jones, two of the locals encountered.
After Cummings’ unnamed salesman arrives and encounters Joceyln Donahue’s waitress, they’re soon joined by two hoods who are clearly responsible for a nearby bank robbery, but as others arrive – mostly while trying to get gas for their cars – and things progress from there with a number of stand-offs that wouldn’t be out of place in a Tarantino film. Gallupi does a decent job with the film’s tone, which has to be half the battle when trying to create a crime fiction tale that’s not fully serious but also isn’t a comedy.
The movie isn’t that groundbreaking, but it’s a fairly impressive debut feature from the director, who has already been signed on to direct a new Evil Dead movie, apparently. The storytelling, writing and acting are all solid for a movie that plays within a genre that’s seen many good movies but also many bad ones. Gallupi’s efforts are commendable enough to recommend for those who enjoy ensemble crime dramas.
Rating: 7/10
POOLMAN (Vertical)
Chris Pine makes his directorial debut with this comedy mystery, in which he plays Darren Barrenman, a guy who looks after the pool of the Tahitian Tiki apartment block, hoping to make it a better place to live. Pine’s cast includes Annette Bening, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dewanda Wise, John Ortiz, Danny De Vito, and more.
I try my best to deliberately avoid other reviews before I watch a movie, but the reviews for Chris Pine’s first movie as a director were so horrid out of TIFF last September that it was impossible to avoid them completely. Because of that, I did my best to put off watching it, even though my curiosity was always nagging me, “Can it really be that bad?”
Well, now that I’ve seen it, I can reply with the affirmative, because this is a movie that I honestly can’t imagine anyone will want to pay to see. Maybe if you’re just wanting to watch Chris Pine in swim trunks, the movie does offer that for the first few minutes, but then it diverges into an attempt at a comedic noir film with a character not unlike Matthew McCoughnahey in Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum or Jeff Bridges in The Big Lebowski.
There actually is somewhat of a plot that involves Darren – who is constantly writing letters to Erin Brockovich, who he idolizes – trying to make the L.A. transit system better, but he then discovers a plot to steal water while L.A. is still in a drought. It probably sounds familiar because it was the plot for Chinatown, and Pine makes things worse by making multiple references to Chinatown, so it wasn’t a decision made by chance. In many ways, this reminded me more of PT Anderson’s Inherent Vice, which is not a movie I liked. On top of that, Poolman is exceedingly L.A. almost to the point where I’m not sure whether anyone outside of L.A. will even care about it, and I’m saying that as someone who is travelling to L.A. this weekend.
This seems like Pine just wanted to make a movie like some of those he’s enjoyed and wanted to work with his friends, and his success in Hollywood gave him enough clout to make that happen. He’s a competent director, only in the sense that he surrounds himself with decent crafts people, but he desperately needed someone to direct his performance which is so over-the-top bad that it tends to bring down the efforts by others to make anything more from his awful script. There are also so many “what the f?” moments in the mix that it never can get out of the hole it digs for itself.
Poolman isn’t just a waste of talent – and I’m not even just referring to Pine himself – but it never really does enough to justify or redeem its existence other than being a vanity project for Pine to do something with his friends that probably won’t have much lasting value.
Rating: 3.5/10
And yet, that wasn’t even the worst movie I saw this week, as that would be…
MOTHER OF THE BRIDE (Netflix)
Mark Waters, director of movies such as Mean Girls and Freaky Friday, helms this remake of the 1991 Steve Martin and Martin Short comedy, this one starring Brooke Shields in the title role as Lana, the Type A mother of Miranda Cosgrove’s Emma, who has gotten engaged to her boyfriend RJ (Sean Teale), and whose father Will (Benjamin Bratt) used to date Lana in college.
I’m not really sure how so many of these destination wedding comedies keep getting made, but they seemingly are non-stop, and much of the time, the writing and storytelling are just awful. That’s pretty much the case here, as we go through the exact same beats we’ve seen in so many of those other movies. The supporting characters include Lana’s catty best friend, played by Rachael Harris; a competing beau played by Chad Michael Murray; and Bratt’s gay brother and his husband, played by Wilson Cruz and Michael McDonald (from Mad TV and many very bad Melissa McCarthy movies).
I enjoy Miranda Cosgrove on the Saturday morning show she hosts, but she is not a very good actor, something that’s painfully obvious as the movie instead focuses on Lana’s exploits with the available men at the wedding, and Shields has not gotten better as an actor with age. Her performance sometimes reaches a Diane Keaton* level of painfulness, since it really comes down to bad direction, as Waters, too, seems to have lost any of his earlier mojo in order to make a buck. But the worst part about Shields’ character and the plot is that it perpetrates the horrible stereotype of older overly-clingy mothers for the sake of laughs that never appear. (*It was only after writing that did I remember that Keaton was in the original and far better 1991 Father of the Bride.)
When people trash a decent and more importantly, FUNNY, rom-com like Anybody but You, then this comes along and is so much worse, I wonder whether maybe the bar hasn’t been set low enough for garbage that seems to be made to merely because streamers need content. The movie was written by Robin Bernheim Burger, who mostly wrote TV in the ‘80s and ‘90s (including Quantum Leap), and it really feels like an older person trying way too hard to be hip for a younger audience. (And this is even not taking into account that there was a very funny comedy
The level of the humor in this involves them playing tennis and Shields accidentally hitting the ball into Bratt’s crotch. That’s supposed to get a laugh. Other attempts at humor are just as juvenile, and most of it the ideas are things we’ve seen in far better movies than this, which also is trying too hard to be “current,” by shoehorning influencers and livestreams and the importance of internet views and all sorts of modern-day bullshit that ends up detracting with everything else, including any sense of romance or emotion, though in the last half, it tries to make the relationship between Lana and Will be something that the audience might root for.
This is absolute garbage, to the point where I really can’t find anything good to say about it, other than it’s a movie… that somehow got greenlit and released… by Netflix, no less. Personally, I’d be embarrassed to be a part of it, since I’ve never had a harder time getting through a movie. Maybe the critics who regularly crap on garbage remakes like this one are partially right. (Seriously, if you love your mother/wife, do NOT recommend seeing this on Sunday!)
Rating: 2/10
THE IMAGE OF YOU (Republic Pictures/Paramount)
Adele Parks’ thriller novel is adapted by director Jeff Fisher with Sasha Pieterse (Pretty Little Liars) playing the dual role of Anna and Zoe, identical twin sisters, whose relationship is tested by Anna’s new love, Nick (Parker Young), who Zoe is skeptical about. The movie also stars Nestor Carbonell and Mira Sorvino, and I just couldn’t get myself interested in watching it. Sorry, publicist.
AISHA (Samuel Goldwyn Films)
I saw Frank Berry’s Irish immigration drama starring Letitia Wright from Black Panther and Josh O’Connor from Challengers when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival back in June 2022, and I’m a little shocked it has taken this long for it to be released, since I remember it being quite good. Unfortunately, it’s also been so long since I saw the movie that I’d have to watch again before reviewing, and I just don’t have that time this week.
AGGRO DR1FT (EDGLRD)
Opening in a number of theaters in New York and elsewhere is the new film from Harmony Korine, which is being self-distributed by his own company, an experimental film shot entirely in infrared, which is somehow connected with rapper Travis Scott, whose work I’m not really familiar with at all.
FORCE OF NATURE: THE DRY 2 (IFC Films)
I never saw Robert Connolly’s Australian crime-thriller The Dry, which came out in 2020 (or probably in 2021 in the States, due to the pandemic), but Eric Bana is back as agent Aaron Falk, who is investigating the disappearance of a woman on a corporate hiking trip to a rainforest, where the other four women are offering divergent stories. It turns out that the missing woman (played by Anna Torv) as an informant, so Falk and his partner Carmen Cooper (Jacqueline McKenzie) must investigate what truly happened. This also opens at the IFC Center with the director and stars doing QnAs.
LET IT BE (Disney+)
Now on Disney+ is the original Michael Lindsay-Hogg-directed documentary about the Beatles shot while they were recording the album of the same name in preparation for their first live concert in many years. This is a nice shortened version of the series preceded by a short conversation between Lindsay-Hogg with Peter Jackson who used his footage for the longer series. Personally, my favorite part was the rooftop concert.
NYC REPERTORY
This weekend is gonna kill me, because there’s so much great repertory stuff in the New York area, but I’ll be in L.A. for the Cruel World Festival.
There are a few new series starting up this weekend, including “Piping Hot Pfeiffer,” which puts the spotlight on the one and only Michelle Pfeiffer, although this weekend, they’re only screening Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), in which she played Catwoman.
“Modern Families” begins with Nina Davenport’s First Comes Love (2013), Kore-eda’s Shoplifters (2018), and Lisa Cholodenko’s Oscar-nominated The Kids are All Right (2010).
Also, this weekend begins “American Landscapes: The Cinema of Kelly Reichardt,” which is showing the entire filmography of the indie auteur, beginning this weekend with River of Grass (1994), Old Joy (2006), and Wendy and Lucy (2008).
“Euro-Heists” will screen Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik (1968), while “‘90s Noir” will show Chritopher Nolan’s Following (1998), and Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear (1991). “Ethics of Care” is showing PT Anderson’s The Master (2012) and Xavier Dolan’s Mommy (2014).
The odd series “Dream With Your Eyes Open” will screen Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990), Raul Ruiz’s Three Crowns of the Sailor (1983), and Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977), the latter which is already sold out through Monday.
NITEHAWK CINEMA PROSPECT PARK & WILLIAMSBURG
You know, I’ve been spending more time at the Nitehawk, mostly the one in Prospect Park, mainly for Sundays on Fire, the monthly secret Hong Kong/kung fu screening put on by Subway Cinema. Tonight (Thursday) at 9:30pm, the Williamsburg will show the movie based on Stephen King’s Cujo (1983). The Crow is playing on Friday and Saturday nights as part of “Goth Night.” Saturday and Sunday for brunch, they’re screening The Notebook (2006) and Park Chanwook’s Lady Vengeance (2005). Prospect Park’s brunch selections this weekend are The First Wives’ Club (1996) and Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974). On Tuesday, May 14, they’re showing David Lynch’s 1984 adaptation of Dune with my good pal Max Evry (who just wrote a book about it called “A Masterpiece in Disarray”!) hosting.
Leading up to the release of Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, both at the Paris and then eventually on Netflix, there’s the series, “Trigger Happy! Hit Men with a Punch Line,” showing Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins on 35mm this Friday, as well as Peter Yates’ Bullitt, and then Michael Mann’s Collateral on Saturday and then again next Thursday. Also showing In Bruges on Friday. On Sunday, the Casting Directors Branch of the Academy will screen Robert Altman’s Nashville (1975).
Showing this weekend as part of the midnight series “Let’s Go Crazy: Cult Musicals” is the ‘80s classic, Flashdance (1983), this weekend’s “Late Night Favorite” is Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986), and then on Monday as part of “Cruising the Movies” is Bob Clark’s She-Man: The Story of Fixation from 1967. Pretty excited that Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, starring Griffin Dunne, one of my all-time favorite movies, is also playing a few times daily through the weekend.
This weekend, “Hiroshi Shimizu Part 1: The Shochiku Years” continues with screenings of Children in the Wind, Sayon’s Bell, and Four Seasons of Children: Spring/Summer, which will eventually continue at Japan Society, but I really know nothing about this filmmaker to expand further. For “Jim Henson’s World” – you’re aware of the ongoing Henson exhibit at MoMI, right? – they’ll be showing The Muppets Take Manhattan on May 11 and 12.
Continuing the repertory love for my favorite Long Island arthouse, who will be showing Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (the original animated film) on Sunday morning as part of “Cinema For Kids.” On Friday night, you can watch Dario Argento’s Opera (1987) as part of its “Night Owl Cinema on Giallo Horror!” On Tuesday night, you can see Anna May Wong in Picadilly, and then on Wednesdy, an all-time comedy classic in Monty Python and the Holy Grail! Sure, it’s a bit of a schlep out of town (about an hour by train) but it’s worth it for some of this programming.
This Sunday’s Film Forum Jr. is Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, which I’m not sure is just a repeat or rescheduled from last weekend. Starting on Friday for a one-week engagement is Charles Crichton The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), starring Sir Alec Guiness.
Showing this weekend at the Roxy is Michael Mann’s Thief, the 1961 film Night Tide, and The Last of the Mohicans (1992).
On Monday, May 13, you can see The Postman Always Rings Twice in 35mm at 4pm and 7pm.
BAM (BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC)
Beginning, Friday, Janus is showing a 4k restoration of Horace Ové’s Pressure from 1976.
Next weekend, you have a few choices including John Krasinski’s IF, Reny Harlin’s The Strangers: Part 1, and the Amy Winehouse biopic, Back to Black. Hopefully, I’ll have time to write a column when I get back from L.A., though I’ll only be able to watch two of the three movies.