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CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 5-8-26

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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review three new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, May 8th, 2026.



With every review I do of a movie based on a video game, I feel compelled to repeat the same disclaimer over and over again: I do not play video games. I’m not a gamer. Never have been.


So when these giant video game adaptations hit theaters (whether it was Return to Silent Hill earlier this year, or Iron Lung, or The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, or the upcoming Street Fighter reboot and yet another Resident Evil movie) I walk into them at an immediate disadvantage because I’m simply not the audience.


And that is absolutely the case with Mortal Kombat II.


Now, this is technically the fourth Mortal Kombat movie if you count Paul W.S. Anderson’s gloriously idiotic 1995 film (which remains one of the dumbest movies ever made) and its catastrophic sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, before the 2021 reboot and now this follow-up.


These movies have always been based on a series of video games that, as far as I can tell, are essentially about insane fantasy creatures beating the hell out of each other in increasingly elaborate and grotesque ways. And this movie absolutely delivers that.


If you are a hardcore Mortal Kombat fan, you are probably going to enjoy this a hell of a lot more than I did because this thing is apparently stuffed to the brim with references, callbacks, Easter eggs, catchphrases, characters returning from the dead, weapons from the games, signature moves, and all kinds of fan-service moments that went completely over my head.


What I can judge it on is whether or not it works as a movie. And honestly? Not really.


Now, I will say this right up front: it is a slight improvement over the 2021 film. Mainly because they brought in Karl Urban as Johnny Cage, and Karl Urban at least understands exactly what kind of movie he’s in. Urban has carved out this very specific niche for himself as an actor.


He’s really good at being the deadpan smart-ass in the middle of completely ridiculous chaos. He did it brilliantly as Bones in the Star Trek reboot movies, and he does it constantly on The Boys, where he basically spends entire episodes reacting sarcastically while people explode into buckets of blood around him. That’s exactly what he’s doing here.


Johnny Cage is introduced as this washed-up action star who gets dragged into the insanity of the Mortal Kombat tournament, where Earthrealm fighters have to stop Shao Kahn and all these other monsters and sorcerers and resurrected warriors from conquering Earth.


That’s the plot. Or at least I think it is. Honestly, after about the fourth portal opening and the eighth giant monster showing up and the seventeenth explanation about magical amulets and Outworld politics, I kind of checked out.


But Karl Urban at least adds some humor. The first few scenes with him are genuinely kind of funny because he’s reacting to all this absurdity the same way a normal human being would.


He’s surrounded by screaming monsters, magical weapons, people getting sliced in half, giant hammer-wielding maniacs, acid pits, teleportation portals, razor-edged hats flying around like deadly Frisbees, and he’s just standing there delivering sarcastic one-liners.


At first, that contrast works. The problem is that the movie has exactly one joke, and it repeats it for over two hours. Eventually, the novelty wears off.


Now, to be fair, the movie absolutely embraces the insanity of the games more than the 2021 version did. It is gorier, nastier, bloodier, and much more unapologetically over-the-top. Heads explode. Limbs fly off. People get impaled on spikes. Faces get smashed into the ground with giant hammers. There’s blood spraying everywhere in every scene like somebody hooked up industrial hoses filled with Kool-Aid.


And apparently, fans wanted that. So, congratulations, fans...you got it.


There are some legitimately entertaining moments here and there. The opening Johnny Cage fight against Baraka is pretty amusing. Some of the practical stunt work is solid. One character gets knocked off a rooftop in a genuinely impressive stunt sequence. Kitana uses those razor fans to chop people apart in ways that are pretty nasty. Some of the “fatalities” are creatively disgusting.


But after a while, all the violence just becomes repetitive noise. And again, maybe if you’re deeply invested in the mythology, maybe if you know who all these people are and why they matter and why it’s exciting that this character returned or this catchphrase was said, maybe it hits differently.


For me, it just felt like watching somebody else play a video game for two hours.


And that’s the thing I keep coming back to with these movies. I don’t go to the theater to watch gameplay. I go to the theater for cinematic storytelling. Character. Atmosphere. Emotion. Suspense. Filmmaking.


This movie feels almost entirely like fan-service gameplay recreation. It’s just level after level after level of combat sequences interrupted by exposition dumps about realms and sorcerers and tournaments and magical artifacts.


Simon McQuoid directs this the same way he directed the 2021 movie: competently but without much personality. The fights are staged okay. The gore effects are definitely bigger this time. But visually, it still mostly looks like expensive cosplay filmed inside giant CGI environments.


And honestly, the influence of The Boys hangs over this thing so heavily that it almost feels like Warner Bros. reverse-engineered the entire movie around Karl Urban’s presence. They clearly realized there’s a huge overlap between people who love Mortal Kombat and people who love The Boys, so they basically shoved the tone of The Boys directly into this franchise: ultra-violence, vulgar humor, sarcastic antiheroes, gallons of blood.


But imitation only gets you so far.


By the end, despite all the added gore, all the bigger action, all the jokes, all the Easter eggs, and all the fan-service, I was exhausted. It just becomes numbing after a while. Endless fights. Endless splattering blood. Endless screaming creatures. Endless magical nonsense.

And again, maybe fans of the games will love every second of it.


But for me, it was just another reminder that video game movies often mistake replication for storytelling. Recreating the experience of a game is not the same thing as making a compelling movie.


At the end of the day, Mortal Kombat II still feels like sitting next to somebody while they play a particularly violent video game.


And that’s simply not why I go to the movies. - ⭐️1/2


Every once in a while, a movie comes along that you walk into with absolutely zero expectations (maybe even a little dread) and it just completely knocks you on your ass. That was The Sheep Detectives for me.


I mean, I saw the trailer, I saw the cast, I saw the premise (sheep solving a murder) and I thought, “Alright, this is gonna be one of those mildly cute, disposable kids movies. Parents suffer through it, kids giggle, everyone forgets it five minutes later.” That’s what I expected.


That is not what this movie is.


This is one of the biggest surprises of the year. It’s wonderful. It’s funny. It’s beautifully made. It’s deeply moving. And it’s a genuinely clever, engaging murder mystery on top of everything else. I mean, this thing works on so many levels it’s kind of ridiculous.


The setup is great: a quiet shepherd named George, played with warmth and charm by Hugh Jackman, reads murder mysteries to his flock of sheep every night. He thinks they don’t understand a word.


Of course, they understand everything. So when George is found dead (murdered, spade in the back) the sheep decide they’re going to solve the crime themselves. And they actually can, because they’ve been trained, essentially, by years of Agatha Christie bedtime stories.


So you’ve got this flock, led by Lily (Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is just terrific), along with Bryan Cranston’s gruff, wounded ram Sebastian, and a whole collection of incredibly distinct, funny, memorable sheep, setting out to investigate suspects in a small English village.


You’ve got the butcher, the lawyer (Emma Thompson, who is a gift in anything she does), the neighbor, the estranged daughter, the local priest, those are all the classic suspects.


And yes, at one point, they’re all gathered in a room for a will reading, like something straight out of a Christie novel. The movie knows exactly what it’s doing with those tropes, and it has a lot of fun with them.


And what really surprised me is how well all of it works together. The mystery is actually compelling. It’s structured properly. There are clues, misdirects, character motivations, and it’s not dumbed down. It’s playful, but it respects the genre.


Now, I had zero expectations for Kyle Balda as a director. I mean, this is a guy mostly known for the Minions movies and The Lorax, which, yeah, they’ve got some laughs, but they’re pretty interchangeable, pretty disposable. Nothing that would prepare you for something like this.


But when you look at his background (working with people like Tim Burton, Peter Jackson, doing animation, effects, character work for years) it all clicks here. This feels like a filmmaker who finally tapped into everything he’s learned and made something special.


The movie is a blend of live action and CGI, and it’s seamless. The sheep are beautifully animated, they are expressive, detailed, and each one has a personality. You care about them. And that’s crucial, because this movie goes to some real emotional places. It deals with grief, death, loss, and not in a condescending way. It treats those themes with care and honesty.


There’s also a lot going on thematically. It’s about groupthink (these are sheep, after all) and the danger of blindly following. It’s about prejudice, judgment, being an outsider. One of the most interesting elements is the idea of “winter-born sheep,” which I learned from this movie are often rejected by the flock.


That becomes a powerful metaphor for how people treat those who are different, who don’t fit in. Bryan Cranston’s Sebastian has this heartbreaking backstory about being cast out, exploited, forced into this horrible existence, and it adds real emotional weight.


And yet, the movie is also really funny. Like, legitimately funny. The human characters are intentionally broader, more caricatured than the animals, which is a smart inversion.


Nicholas Braun is hilarious as the bumbling local cop. Molly Gordon is terrific as George’s daughter. Hong Chau is great. Emma Thompson just swoops in and steals every scene she’s in with these perfectly delivered, snarky lines that absolutely land.


And then there’s the small-town satire, which is fantastic. The politics, the relationships, the weird little rivalries, it’s all very, very funny. There’s a whole sequence involving a tiny “festival” that’s basically four folding tables in a courtyard, and the town treats it like it’s Cannes. That alone is hilarious.


But the moment that absolutely destroyed me (and I mean, I was doubled over laughing) was the Return to Oz stuff. Out of nowhere, there’s this whole reverent discussion about Return to Oz, like it’s the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, and I’m sitting there going, “This movie was made specifically for me.” I’ve been defending Return to Oz for decades. And here it is, getting this weird, hilarious tribute in a sheep murder mystery movie. It killed me.


The voice cast is phenomenal. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives one of the warmest, funniest, most affecting performances I’ve heard in a long time.


Cranston brings depth and gravitas. Chris O’Dowd is hilarious. Regina Hall, Patrick Stewart, Bella Ramsey, Brett Goldstein...everybody brings something to it. The script by Craig Mazin is sharp, witty, and surprisingly wise.


This movie is charming, emotionally resonant, and ambitious. It's got that Babe quality to it. That same mix of humor, heart, and sincerity. It’s not afraid to be a little weird, a little melancholic, a little profound.


And I cried. More than once. Because at its core, this is a story about loss and how we process it, about friendship, about learning not to judge too quickly, about understanding others. It sneaks all of that in under the guise of a quirky little mystery about sheep.


So yeah, I can’t recommend The Sheep Detectives highly enough. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s moving, it’s beautifully made. One of the biggest surprises of the year, and easily one of the best family films I’ve seen in a long time.


I went in expecting a trifle. I walked out genuinely touched. That doesn’t happen very often. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️


So here is a movie that is absolutely, completely, unquestionably made for Billie Eilish fans. And there are millions of them. Millions. Those fans are going to walk into this thing and absolutely lose their minds because Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) is an incredibly well-made concert film and one of the most immersive theatrical experiences I’ve had in a very long time.


Now the interesting thing about this movie is that it is co-directed by Billie Eilish herself and James Cameron, and if you listen to my podcast or read my reviews regularly, you know that I am not a James Cameron fan.


In fact, I think the Avatar movies are some of the dumbest giant blockbusters ever made. I hate those movies. I think they are visually impressive, technologically groundbreaking, and completely soulless.


Cameron has spent the last couple of decades developing all this advanced 3D technology through his Lightstorm production company, pushing digital filmmaking into these giant immersive worlds that, to me, feel less like movies and more like giant video games.


That’s always been my problem with the Avatar movies. The scripts are recycled nonsense (Dances with Wolves, Ferngully, Pocahontas, and a dozen other movies done better somewhere else) and all the technology in the world can’t cover up the fact that there’s no humanity in those movies. They’re technically dazzling and emotionally dead.


But here’s the thing. Taking that technology and applying it to a concert film instead of a giant blue-cat space opera? That’s actually kind of brilliant.


Because for the first time, James Cameron’s obsession with immersive 3D technology is being used for something that genuinely benefits from it. This is the first time all of that Lightstorm tech actually feels emotionally connected to something human.


And the reason it works is because Billie Eilish herself brings the humanity that has always been missing from Cameron’s movies.


The film captures performances from her giant Manchester shows during the Hit Me Hard and Soft tour, and it uses these specially designed 3D cameras to put you directly onstage with her. Not just watching from the audience, you feel like you’re physically standing there.


The depth is astonishing. The camera glides through stage fog, underneath platforms, through tunnels backstage, across these massive arenas packed with screaming fans, and the 3D actually enhances the emotional intimacy rather than distracting from it.


And honestly, I think this is the best use of 3D technology I’ve seen in years.


You really do feel immersed in Billie Eilish’s world. Not just during the giant concert sequences, which are spectacular, but during the quieter moments too. The backstage footage, the rehearsals, the exhaustion, the stress, the injuries, the pressure of mounting a gigantic world tour, all of those moments hit because Billie Eilish is incredibly open and vulnerable here.


And I’ve gotta say: I really like Billie Eilish.


Now, I’m not some obsessive superfan. I don’t own every album. I’m not sitting around blasting her music 24 hours a day. But every time I hear her music, every time I see her perform, I’m impressed. I think she’s enormously talented. I think she’s smart. I think she’s a fantastic performer. And I think she seems like a genuinely decent human being.


That all comes through beautifully in this movie.


Her relationship with her fans is really moving. There are scenes of fans camping outside hotels, crying before the concerts, hugging each other, completely overwhelmed emotionally, and the movie never mocks that or treats it cynically.


Billie clearly loves her audience, and her audience absolutely adores her. There’s a sincerity there that’s honestly kind of refreshing.


And the relationship with her brother FINNEAS is one of the emotional anchors of the movie. Their creative partnership, their friendship, the pressure of performing without him during some of the tour, it all adds this emotional layer that elevates the film beyond just “watching songs performed live.”


There are also some really terrific behind-the-scenes moments involving the logistics of these giant shows. The tech issues. The physical wear and tear. The emotional burnout. The movie actually shows how brutally exhausting it is to pull off something at this scale night after night.


And then there’s the music itself.


The performances are fantastic. Songs like “Lunch,” “Wildflower,” “The Greatest,” “Birds of a Feather,” “The Diner,” and “When the Party’s Over” are staged beautifully, and because of the way the cameras move and the way the sound design works, you don’t feel like you’re watching a concert movie, you feel like you’re inside the concert.


And if you can see this in IMAX 3D with the loudest possible sound system? Absolutely do it. This movie was made for gigantic screens and overwhelming sound. The audio is phenomenal. The bass rattles your chest. The lighting effects explode off the screen. There are moments where the audience around you almost disappears because you feel physically transported into the arena.


And again, that’s something James Cameron’s technology has never done for me before. In Avatar, all that technology just felt cold and mechanical. Here, because Billie Eilish is such a compelling presence and because the movie focuses so heavily on actual human emotion and connection, the technology finally has a soul.


Honestly? This is probably the best thing James Cameron has directed since Titanic. Seriously. It’s easily the best use of his 3D experimentation in decades.


And as a concert film? It’s one of the best I’ve ever seen.


It belongs in the conversation with the really great immersive concert movies because it understands that the point isn’t just documenting performances. It's capturing presence. Capturing energy. Capturing emotion. And it absolutely succeeds.


Billie Eilish fans are going to be ecstatic. They’re going to eat this thing up. But even if you’re like me (someone who admires her more than obsessively follows her) I think there’s a lot to appreciate here.


It’s immersive, technically astounding, emotionally sincere, visually overwhelming in the best possible way, and surprisingly intimate for something this gigantic.


And for the first time in a very long time, James Cameron’s obsession with technology actually serves something genuinely human.


I highly recommend Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D). It’s one of the best concert movies I’ve ever seen, one of the best 3D experiences I’ve ever had in a theater, and easily the best thing James Cameron has been involved with in nearly 30 years. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2



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