CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 5-1-26
- Nick Digilio
- 4 minutes ago
- 20 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, May 1st, 2026.
It’s kind of wild to think that The Devil Wears Prada is now a 20-year-old movie. I mean, seriously…where the hell did that time go? I remember seeing it in the theater, liking it quite a bit, thinking it was sharp and funny and elevated mostly by that incredible cast (Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci) all firing on all cylinders.
And over the years it’s become one of those cable staples, you dip in, you watch a chunk, you enjoy it, you move on. It never really screamed “sequel,” though, and for a long time it seemed like the people involved agreed.
Well, here we are. The Devil Wears Prada 2 exists, and I’ve gotta tell you that I was pleasantly surprised. I really was. Because going in, I didn’t expect much. And what I got was a movie that is about as light as a feather and about as deep as an ashtray… but you know what? It’s also consistently entertaining, frequently funny, and genuinely charming.
The setup this time around finds Miranda Priestly (still played to icy perfection by Meryl Streep) dealing with a changing world. Print media is dying, magazines are folding, and Runway is on the chopping block.
Corporate vultures are circling, the money is drying up, and Miranda, this once-untouchable gatekeeper of fashion and taste, suddenly has to fight to stay relevant. That alone is kind of an interesting angle, that this titan of an industry being forced to adapt or disappear.
Into that chaos comes Andy Sachs, Anne Hathaway returning, now older, wiser, a working journalist who finds herself pulled back into Miranda’s orbit after her own publication gets shut down. So she’s back at Runway, this time not as the wide-eyed assistant but as someone with experience, perspective, and a little more backbone.
And then there’s Emily Blunt, who basically flips the power dynamic on its head. Emily Charlton is no longer the abused assistant. She is now a high-powered executive with the money Miranda needs. So suddenly Miranda is the one who has to play nice, which is kind of fun to watch. That reversal is probably the most interesting thing the movie does, even if it never digs all that deep into it.
But let’s be honest about what this movie really is. It’s not about plot. It’s not about deep thematic exploration. It’s about style. It’s about flash. It’s about watching beautiful people in incredible clothes walking through gorgeous locations while snarky, funny dialogue gets tossed around like confetti.
This thing is a full-on travelogue. New York, Paris, Milan, the Hamptons—you’re bouncing around the globe like you’re on some kind of high-fashion treadmill. And it moves fast. Really fast.
The editing is quick, the scenes are short, and before you can stop and think, “Wait, that didn’t make any sense,” you’re already onto the next fabulous outfit, the next location, the next joke.
And honestly, that works in its favor.
The cast? Terrific. Meryl Streep slips right back into Miranda like she never left, she is still icy, still commanding, but with just enough vulnerability creeping in this time to give her a little more dimension.
Anne Hathaway is as charming as ever, her smile still lights up the screen, she’s funny, she’s engaging, she carries a lot of the movie’s warmth.
Emily Blunt is having a blast here. She’s the closest thing the movie has to a villain, and her scenes with Hathaway are great. They’ve got terrific chemistry and some genuinely funny exchanges.
Stanley Tucci? Come on. The guy is just effortlessly wonderful. Warm, funny, understated, and his relationship with Miranda actually provides some of the film’s more sincere emotional moments.
And then you’ve got a whole parade of supporting players and cameos. B.J. Novak is really funny as this corporate nepo-bro type. Lucy Liu shows up and brings some sharp energy. Justin Theroux is hysterical as this clueless, absurdly wealthy guy who has no idea how ridiculous he is. There’s a running gag about his surgeries and his lifestyle that actually lands pretty well.
Kenneth Branagh pops in as Miranda’s new husband...look, I’m not the biggest Branagh fan, but he doesn’t wreck anything, which is a win.
Patrick Brammall, who I love from Evil, is unfortunately wasted as Andy’s love interest, and he barely registers, which is kind of a shame.
And then, yeah, you get the cameos. Fashion icons, celebrities, Donatella Versace, a big Lady Gaga moment, you know the deal. It’s that kind of movie.
There’s even a really nice scene set in Milan, in front of The Last Supper, where Miranda and Andy have this quiet conversation about betrayal, friendship, and the death of an industry. It’s one of the few moments where the movie slows down and actually lets something land emotionally, and it works.
But again, this is not a movie that’s trying to change your life. It’s not trying to be profound. It throws in some commentary about the death of print journalism, about corporate greed, about the shift to digital and social media, but it never goes very deep with any of it. It’s more like window dressing than substance.
What it is, though, is fun.
It’s glossy. It’s fast. It’s loaded with fashion, music, jokes, and just enough heart to keep you engaged. It’s the cinematic equivalent of flipping through a really expensive magazine...ironically, the kind Miranda is trying to save.
And you know what? Sometimes that’s enough.
I laughed a lot. I was entertained the whole time. It doesn’t overstay its welcome, it keeps moving, and by the time it’s over, you’ve had a good time. You’ve looked at beautiful things, listened to witty dialogue, watched talented people do their thing, and you walk out smiling.
That’s what this is.
It’s a flashy, lightweight, thoroughly enjoyable diversion. Nothing more, nothing less.
So, yeah, I liked The Devil Wears Prada 2. I really did. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Every once in a while, especially if you’re a horror fan like I am, you get that feeling (you know it right away) you’re watching something and you go, “oh…this person knows exactly what they’re doing.” That’s a great feeling. It’s exciting. It’s rare.
And I’ve got to tell you, Damian McCarthy is that guy.
With Hokum, his third feature, he has absolutely announced himself as a major voice in horror. No question about it. This is one of the best horror films of the year, and frankly, one of the best movies of the year, period.
Now, if you’ve been paying attention, you know McCarthy’s been building toward this. Caveat was a terrific little calling card, it was tight, creepy, smart. Then Oddity comes along and just blows the doors open. That’s one of the most beautifully crafted, genuinely scary films of the last several years.
And now with Hokum? Everything clicks. Everything expands. Everything explodes in terms of confidence, imagination, and execution.
So what’s it about?
Adam Scott (yes, that Adam Scott from Severance, Parks and Rec, Party Down) and he is phenomenal here, plays Ohm Bauman, a misanthropic, alcoholic horror novelist who travels to a remote Irish hotel to scatter his parents’ ashes.
This is where they honeymooned decades earlier, and he’s returning to this place with a whole lot of baggage. Emotional baggage, psychological baggage, and as it turns out…maybe something supernatural as well.
Because this hotel? Yeah, it’s one of those places.
Strange staff. Weird vibe. Off-limits rooms. In particular, the Honeymoon Suite, which is completely sealed off, locked, gated, because it’s supposedly haunted by some ancient witch. Of course it is. This is Ireland, and McCarthy leans heavily (and beautifully) into Irish folklore here.
The atmosphere is thick. You feel it. The woods, the isolation, the age of the building, the sense that something old and rotten is lurking just beneath the surface.
And Ohm, being the kind of arrogant, closed-off, cynical jerk that he is, doesn’t believe any of it. Not at first.
But he’s also curious. And he’s haunted...by very real things. His mother was murdered when he was a child. His father was an abusive alcoholic. He carries guilt, trauma, anger, and he’s basically poured all of that into his work.
He’s this successful writer (very Stephen King-esque, with his “Conquistador Trilogy”) but as a human being, he’s a mess. He drinks too much, treats people like garbage, burns a bellhop with a hot spoon in one of the movie’s early “okay, this guy is really a jerk” moments.
So we’ve got that going on. And then…things start happening.
There’s a bartender named Fiona (Florence Ordesh) who has a key interaction with him, possibly saves his life, and then she disappears. Just gone. That becomes the central mystery. What happened to her? Is it connected to the Honeymoon Suite? Is it the witch? Is it something else entirely?
Ohm teams up, sort of reluctantly, with this oddball local named Jerry (David Wilmot) this bearded guy living in a van in the woods, rumored to have killed his wife, who takes mushrooms and talks about opening your mind. And there’s this great contrast between these two guys: one completely closed off, the other completely open to everything.
And from there, the movie becomes this incredible blend of genres. It’s a supernatural horror film, absolutely. It’s also a murder mystery. It’s also a psychological study. It’s also a story about addiction, about guilt, about childhood trauma, about creativity and what drives it. And McCarthy weaves all of that together brilliantly.
There’s a long stretch (almost a half hour) with virtually no dialogue. Just Adam Scott navigating the hotel, particularly the forbidden Honeymoon Suite, which is this labyrinth of rooms, hallways, hidden spaces, dumbwaiters that go down into a basement that you really, really don’t want to see.
And the way this sequence is constructed, it’s absolutely masterful. The editing, the sound design, the pacing, the way things appear over his shoulder, behind him, just out of frame. It is pure, uncut suspense. My stomach was in knots. I was on the edge of my seat. I had no idea what was coming next.
And yes, there are jump scares. But here’s the thing: they’re earned. They’re not cheap. They’re not lazy. These are beautifully executed moments of tension release, built through careful camera work, editing, performance, and atmosphere. When they hit, they hit hard.
And the atmosphere, my God, the atmosphere. This is a moody movie. Dark, oppressive, filled with dread. Colm Hogan's cinematography is gorgeous in that bleak, shadowy, “you don’t want to be here” kind of way.
The score, by Joseph Bishara, is fantastic, it is low, rumbling, unsettling. Everything works together to create this constant sense of unease.
And then McCarthy throws in these nightmare elements. This character from Ohm’s childhood (a bizarre, bug-eyed, nightmare-inducing figure named Jack, this sort of twisted children’s TV host, part donkey, part rabbit, completely terrifying) shows up in visions.
These sequences tap into something primal, something about childhood fear that’s just deeply unsettling.
So you’ve got the witch. You’ve got the murder mystery. You’ve got the trauma. You’ve got the hallucinations. You’ve got the addiction allegory. You’ve got Irish folklore. And somehow…it all works.
That’s the amazing thing. All of these potentially clashing tones and ideas are brought together into something cohesive. Something uniquely McCarthy’s.
And yeah, you can see the influences. There’s definitely some of The Shining in here, because you can’t do a haunted hotel without that hanging over you. There’s a lot of Barton Fink: the misanthropic writer, the strange hotel, the creepy bellboy, the sense of things unraveling psychologically and physically. Flames down hallways, bizarre encounters, all that stuff.
You can feel those inspirations. But it never feels derivative, like say, I don't know: Sinners.
McCarthy takes those elements and makes them his own. This is a distinct voice. A distinct style. A filmmaker who understands horror not just as a series of scares, but as mood, as character, as theme, as emotional excavation. And it’s not just scary, it’s meaningful.
This is a movie about guilt. About the things that happen to you as a child that never leave you. About the things you might have done, or feel responsible for, that shape who you become.
About addiction (alcoholism, in particular) and how it perpetuates cycles of damage. And about creativity, about how artists mine their own trauma to create work, and what that costs them.
There’s a moment late in the film where Ohm is forced to confront what really happened in his past, what he’s been carrying, and there’s a breakdown there that is genuinely moving. It's not just horror, it’s catharsis.
And Adam Scott is fantastic. This is a career-best performance. He carries the movie. He makes you believe in this guy, even when he’s being awful. You understand him. You understand why he is the way he is. And when the cracks start to show, when the guilt starts to surface, it lands.
The supporting cast is terrific, the setting is perfect, the tone is consistent even when the elements are varied, and the scares, man, the scares are real.
This is a dark, creepy, beautifully crafted, deeply unsettling film that also happens to be smart, funny in spots, emotionally resonant, and thematically rich.
Damian McCarthy is the real deal. And Hokum is proof of that.
One of the best horror films of the year. Don’t miss it. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I’ve always had a real soft spot for Renny Harlin. I really have. Going back to the late ’80s and early ’90s, the guy was on a run (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4, Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, The Long Kiss Goodnight) big, muscular, unapologetically entertaining movies.
And then, of course, he gave us Deep Blue Sea, which is still one of the most gloriously ridiculous and insanely entertaining shark movies ever made. I mean, Samuel L. Jackson getting chomped mid-speech? Come on. That’s cinema.
Harlin knows how to stage action. He knows how to cut it, how to build it, how to make it exciting. I’ve always thought he deserved more credit than he gets. I think he’s a much better action director than a lot of guys who get way more attention and way bigger budgets.
So when I heard he was coming back with Deep Water, a plane-crash-meets-shark-attack survival thriller, I thought, “Okay, this could be fun. This could be Harlin getting back to his wheelhouse.”
Well… yeah. About that.
Deep Water is essentially a throwback to those big, dumb, all-star disaster movies from the ’70s. You know the ones: Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno, all those Irwin Allen productions where you get a bunch of paper-thin characters, give them each a little soap opera backstory, and then throw them into some massive catastrophe and see who makes it out alive.
That’s the template here. And on top of that, you mix in a little Jaws, a little “animals attack” movie nonsense, and what you’ve got is basically Airport ’77 smashed together with a shark movie.
So the setup: international flight from L.A. to Shanghai, big plane, lots of passengers, all of whom are introduced in the most clichéd, paint-by-numbers way imaginable. You’ve got Aaron Eckhart as the square-jawed first officer with a troubled home life: sick kid, emotional baggage, the whole deal.
Ben Kingsley, of all people, is the captain, introduced in a karaoke bar singing “Fly Me to the Moon,” which… yeah, if you’ve ever wanted to see Ben Kingsley croon Sinatra before piloting a plane, here you go.
And then the passengers...oh my God, the passengers. This is straight out of the Irwin Allen playbook: You’ve got the bickering couples, the young lovers who aren’t supposed to be together, the annoying kid with family issues.
You've also got the remarried dad sneaking off to the airplane bathroom for a quickie (yes, that actually happens) and the obligatory slob jerk, played by Angus Sampson, who smokes everywhere he’s not supposed to and is basically a walking disaster waiting to happen.
And, of course, he is the disaster. Because he checks a bag with some kind of electronic device that sparks, catches fire, explodes, blows a hole in the plane, engines go out, chaos ensues. That’s your inciting incident. Subtle.
Then the movie turns into what you’re really here for: the plane crash.
And I’ll tell you this, Harlin still’s got it when it comes to staging big action. The crash sequence is terrific. It’s loud, it’s chaotic, people getting sucked out of the fuselage, debris flying everywhere, bodies smashing around, engines exploding.
It's exactly the kind of over-the-top spectacle you want from a guy who made Die Hard 2. The water landing is intense, the plane splitting apart is well done… for about 10 or 15 minutes, you’re like, “Okay, here we go. This is gonna be fun.”
And then… the movie crashes along with the plane.
Because once they’re in the water, once the survivors are clinging to wreckage and rafts and you realize, “Oh right, sharks,” that’s when everything just kind of… deflates. The sharks show up, sure, but the attacks are surprisingly underwhelming.
There aren’t enough of them, they’re not particularly inventive, and they’re nowhere near the level of insanity or entertainment that Deep Blue Sea gave us. Not even close.
There’s one moment where a shark jumps into a raft with Eckhart that’s kind of fun, and a couple of scattered attacks that have a little bite to them, but for the most part? It’s just people floating around, yelling at each other, dealing with their soap opera problems while occasionally someone gets nibbled.
And that’s the real problem, the characters. They’re all one-dimensional clichés. You don’t care about any of them. The dialogue is painfully dumb. Everything is telegraphed.
Eckhart has to “step up” and become the hero, reconcile his personal issues, prove he’s worthy, blah blah blah. Kingsley sleepwalks through it. The kids (oh yeah, there is a kid named Finn in a shark movie, I am not making that up) the kids are exactly as annoying as you think they're going to be.
There’s even a moment where they reference Shelley Winters, which is clearly a wink to The Poseidon Adventure, and it’s like, yeah, we get it—you’re making a knockoff of a ’70s disaster movie.
The problem is, those movies were already kind of dumb, but they had scale, they had star power, they had a sense of fun. This feels like a low-rent cosplay version of that formula.
And that’s really what this is: a modern, not-very-inspired attempt to recreate a genre that maybe doesn’t need recreating, at least not like this.
Now look, Harlin does what he can. You can see flashes of his skill. The crash is great. A couple of the shark moments land. He knows how to move the camera, he knows how to cut action.
But he’s completely sunk by a script that was apparently written by six people, which is amazing, because it feels like it was written by one person half-asleep after binge-watching old disaster movies.
So what you end up with is a movie that starts off kind of goofy-fun, delivers a legitimately strong crash sequence, and then turns into a dull, cliché-ridden survival story with not enough sharks, not enough suspense, and way too much bad dialogue.
And that’s a shame, because I always root for Renny Harlin. I really do.
But this one? This is a misfire. A well-intentioned, occasionally entertaining misfire, but a misfire nonetheless.
So yeah… I can’t recommend Deep Water. Not unless you’re a die-hard Harlin completist or you’ve got a real craving for a bargain-bin version of Airport ’77 meets Jaws.
Otherwise, you can skip it. - ⭐️⭐️
There are certain books (certain pieces of literature) that you just don’t mess with unless you have a really clear, really compelling reason to do so. And George Orwell’s Animal Farm is right at the top of that list.
It’s one of the most important allegorical works ever written. It’s sharp, it’s brutal, it’s direct, and it has something very specific (and very powerful) to say.
So when I heard there was another adaptation coming, I thought, “okay…this could be interesting.” Especially now, given the world we’re living in. We’re in a very Orwellian time. You could do something really smart, really biting, really relevant with this material.
That is not what this movie is.
This version of Animal Farm, directed by Andy Serkis and written by Nicholas Stoller, is a completely misguided, tone-deaf, bafflingly bad idea from the get-go. And watching it, you realize pretty quickly (within about ten minutes) that this thing never had a chance.
Let’s start with the basics. Yes, it’s still the story we know: animals overthrow their human owner, Mr. Jones, and take control of the farm. They create a new society based on equality. The pigs take leadership roles (Napoleon, Snowball) and eventually, as we all know, power corrupts. The commandments get twisted. The pigs become indistinguishable from the humans they replaced.
That’s the story. Except…not really.
Because this version decides to take that razor-sharp political allegory and turn it into a wacky, family-friendly, slapstick comedy. With fart jokes. I’m not kidding. Actual, extended fart jokes. In Animal Farm.
Nicholas Stoller (who, by the way, has built a career writing broad, stoner comedies like Neighbors, Get Him to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) is just completely the wrong guy for this material. Completely. And he doesn’t even try to adapt Orwell in any meaningful way. Instead, he reshapes the story into this goofy, over-the-top, kind of dumb comedy that feels like a rejected Illumination script.
And the tone…oh my God, the tone.
It’s all over the place. It has no idea what it wants to be. Is it satire? Is it a serious commentary on modern society? Is it a kid-friendly adventure? Is it a parody? It tries to be all of those things at once and ends up being none of them.
They even change the core allegory. Orwell’s original was a clear commentary on Stalinism and the Russian Revolution. Here, it’s vaguely about corporate capitalism. There are drones. There are Cybertruck-type vehicles.
There’s this weird attempt to modernize the story, but it’s so clumsy and so unfocused that it just collapses under its own confusion.
And then there’s the addition of this new character, Lucky, a young piglet who serves as the audience surrogate, the “coming-of-age” perspective. Which, in theory, is fine. You can do that.
But the way it’s handled here? It just turns the story into this soft, watered-down “maybe the next generation will fix things” kind of message that completely undercuts the devastating, pessimistic punch of the original.
Because here’s the thing: Animal Farm is not supposed to be hopeful. It’s supposed to be bleak. It’s supposed to leave you unsettled. That’s the point. This movie gives you a happy ending. A happy ending. In Animal Farm.
That alone should tell you everything you need to know.
Now, Andy Serkis, look, he’s a brilliant performer. One of the best motion-capture actors we’ve ever had. Gollum, Caesar, King Kong...he’s done incredible work. But as a director? He has not shown that he’s capable of handling material like this.
Mowgli didn’t work. Venom: Let There Be Carnage was a mess. And here, he’s completely out of his depth. There’s no sense of control, no understanding of tone, no ability to balance the elements. It just feels like a bunch of ideas thrown at the wall.
And then you’ve got Seth Rogen as Napoleon.
Now, sometimes I like Seth Rogen in the right context. But this is not the right context. His voice, his delivery, that signature stoner laugh, it completely undermines the character.
Napoleon is supposed to be menacing, manipulative, terrifying in his rise to power. Here, he sounds like he wandered in from one of Stoller’s comedies. It’s ridiculous.
And the rest of the cast, on paper, it’s incredible. Kieran Culkin, Glenn Close, Steve Buscemi, Laverne Cox, Woody Harrelson, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, these are great actors. And you can feel them trying. You really can. But they’re stuck in a movie that has no idea what it’s doing.
They’re trying to bring depth to something that’s fundamentally shallow.
And the humor? It’s awful. Slapstick, juvenile, completely out of place. There are subplots involving animals trying to use technology in a mall. There are gags that feel like they belong in a straight-to-video kids movie. And again: fart jokes. I just… I cannot get over that.
In Animal Farm.
It’s like nobody involved stopped to ask, “should we be doing this?”
Now, technically, the movie looks fine. The animation is polished. It’s bright, it’s colorful, it’s professionally done. You can see where the money went. But that almost makes it worse, because all of that effort is in service of something that completely misses the point.
This is a film that strips away everything that makes Orwell’s story powerful (the allegory, the bite, the intelligence, the darkness) and replaces it with a dumbed-down, family-friendly, overly cheerful version that feels like it was designed to offend no one and say nothing.
And in doing that, it becomes offensive in a different way. Because it disrespects the source material.
This project has been floating around for years, changing hands, shifting directions, and you can tell. It feels like a bad idea that nobody ever stopped to reconsider. And all the time in the world hasn’t helped it.
So yeah, if you want to see Animal Farm turned into a wacky, brightly colored, joke-filled, kid-friendly comedy, go ahead. But if you have any respect for the book, for Orwell, or for what that story actually means…Stay away.
This is one of the worst adaptations of a classic novel I’ve ever seen. - ⭐️
There was a time when this kind of movie might’ve felt fresh. When filmmakers were digging into the grit and grime of ‘70s exploitation cinema, pulling from blaxploitation, kung fu flicks, revenge thrillers, and remixing it with a wink and a sense of style.
You know, the whole post-Pulp Fiction wave where everybody wanted to be Quentin Tarantino…including Quentin Tarantino, who himself was riffing on better, earlier filmmakers.
That moment has long passed.
Which makes One Spoon of Chocolate, the latest film from RZA, feel like it’s arriving about twenty years too late, and even then, it wouldn’t have been very good.
Let’s get the basics out of the way. The story follows Unique (Shameik Moore) an ex-military guy, recently out of prison, trying to start over in a small Ohio town. Of course, this is not a place where you start over. This is one of those towns. Corrupt sheriff, racist locals, violence simmering under the surface.
And when his cousin disappears, Unique uncovers a grotesque conspiracy involving the disappearance (and murder) of young Black men tied to an organ trafficking operation.
So what we’ve got here is a revenge thriller. A grindhouse-style, blood-soaked, vigilante story where a wronged man arms himself, trains up, and goes to war against a corrupt system.
You’ve seen this movie before. You've seen it done better. Many times.
And that’s really the problem with One Spoon of Chocolate. It’s derivative to the point of distraction. You can feel every influence, every borrowed beat, every lifted idea. There’s Rolling Thunder all over this thing, that great Paul Schrader-scripted revenge movie from the ‘70s.
There’s a ton of blaxploitation influence, like Gordon’s War, Bucktown, Three the Hard Way. There’s even a bunch of wuxia thrown in there, you know, stylized combat, makeshift weapons, that kind of thing. And none of it feels organic. It feels like cosplay.
That’s really the best way to describe this movie: it’s a filmmaker cosplaying other filmmakers. RZA clearly loves this stuff (no question about it) but loving something and understanding it are two very different things.
This feels like someone who watched a bunch of great exploitation and kung fu movies years later, probably on video, maybe late at night, maybe after smoking a bunch of weed, and thought, “yeah, I can do that.”
But he can’t.
Because what made those movies work wasn’t just the surface elements, like the violence, the revenge, the attitude. It was the craftsmanship. The pacing. The editing. The sense of style that came from filmmakers who knew exactly how to stage action, how to build tension, how to make you care about the characters.
That’s missing here. Completely.
RZA’s direction is flat. The stylization (the grainy, retro look, the attempt to mimic old film stock) it feels forced. There’s no real passion behind it, no real understanding of why those textures worked in the first place. It’s just applied like a filter.
And the performances…they’re not good. They range from mediocre to just plain bad. Shameik Moore does what he can, but the character is so thinly written, so generic, that there’s nothing to grab onto.
The supporting cast (Paris Jackson, RJ Cyler, Blair Underwood, the whole group) they’re all stuck in this awkward space where they’re supposed to be playing heightened, stylized characters, but there’s no consistency in tone. Nobody seems to be in the same movie.
And the action? Not great.
There’s a hallway fight sequence that is so obviously trying to channel Oldboy (that famous, endlessly copied sequence) and it just falls flat. Poor choreography, sloppy editing, no real sense of spatial awareness.
There’s a basketball court confrontation with a group of white supremacists that should be tense and explosive, but it’s just clunky and badly staged.
Then you’ve got the training montage with Unique holed up, building weapons, crafting armor out of scrap, studying a survival manual. Again, we’ve seen this. Over and over. And here, it just plays like a checklist.
And the climax, which is a big, bloody siege in a brothel hideout, complete with swords, improvised weapons, and stylized takedowns. It should be the payoff. It should be the moment where everything comes together. It doesn’t. It’s messy, it’s overlong, and it lacks any real impact.
That’s another big issue, this movie is way too long. It runs close to two hours, and there is absolutely no reason for that. This should be a lean, mean, 85-90 minute exploitation throwback. Tight, nasty, efficient. Instead, it drags. It wears you down.
And whatever satirical edge it thinks it has? It’s not there. There’s no real bite. No real commentary. It gestures toward themes of racism, corruption, systemic violence, but it doesn’t explore them in any meaningful way. It’s all surface.
That’s the word that keeps coming back: surface. This is all surface. Style without substance. Homage without understanding. A copy of a copy of a copy.
And yeah, Quentin Tarantino’s name is attached as a presenter, which makes sense, because this feels like the kind of movie people were making in the wake of his early success.
But even that feels like a relic. Like something pulled out of a time capsule from the mid-2000s when everybody was trying to replicate that grindhouse aesthetic. We’ve moved past that. Or at least, we should have.
And look, I grew up on this stuff. I saw those blaxploitation movies in theaters. In Chicago. In the Loop. Packed houses, incredible energy, real cultural context. Those movies meant something. They had a pulse. They had urgency.
This doesn’t.
This feels like someone imitating something they didn’t fully understand.
There are a couple of moments that get a chuckle. A few bursts of violence that might catch your attention. But overall? It’s dull. It’s uninspired. It’s derivative.
It’s poser, hipster nonsense that might’ve felt mildly interesting twenty years ago. Now, It just feels tired.
I definitely do not recommend One Spoon of Chocolate. - ⭐️1/2
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