CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 6-5-26

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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, June 5th, 2026.

1) MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE

There are some movies that arrive carrying decades of baggage. Masters of the Universe is one of them.

Before I get into the movie itself, I should probably start by saying that I never played with the He-Man toys. I was too old. By the time the Mattel figures started flying off toy store shelves in the early 1980s, I had already graduated high school.

By the time He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra were showing up on television, I was already in my twenties. So unlike a lot of people who are going to see this movie, I don't have any childhood attachment to these characters. I didn't spend afternoons playing with Castle Grayskull. I didn't memorize the mythology. I didn't collect the figures.

My only real connection to the franchise was the gloriously ridiculous 1987 live-action movie starring Dolph Lundgren, a film produced by the legendary Cannon Films team of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus.

Like most people who have seen that movie, I recognize it as a camp classic, and not because it's good, but because it's so spectacularly absurd that it becomes entertaining in spite of itself. It's the kind of movie you watch with friends after a few beers and spend the entire running time laughing at the insanity unfolding on screen.

So I walked into this new version of Masters of the Universe with absolutely no emotional investment whatsoever. No nostalgia. No childhood memories. No attachment to the toys. Just a sixty-year-old film critic expecting another giant corporate toy adaptation.

And I was completely blindsided. This movie is funny. Really funny. Not accidentally funny. Intentionally funny.

Directed by Travis Knight, the tremendously talented filmmaker behind Kubo and the Two Strings and Bumblebee, Masters of the Universe understands exactly what it is. It understands how ridiculous the source material is. It understands how silly these character names are. It understands how inherently goofy the entire mythology of Eternia is. Most importantly, it embraces that ridiculousness instead of running away from it.

The story itself follows Prince Adam, played by Nicholas Galitzine, who was sent to Earth as a child after Skeletor conquered Eternia. Fifteen years later, Adam has grown up on Earth, working a mundane human resources job while obsessively searching for the lost Sword of Power.

When he finally finds it, he's transported back to Eternia, where he discovers his homeworld has fallen under Skeletor's tyrannical rule. Alongside Teela, Man-At-Arms, and a collection of wonderfully bizarre warriors, Adam must embrace his destiny and become He-Man in order to save Eternia.

Now look, that plot is ridiculous. The movie knows it's ridiculous. That's the key.

Mattel seems to have figured something out after Barbie. That film succeeded because it loved the toy while simultaneously making fun of it. It celebrated Barbie while also dissecting and mocking the entire concept. Masters of the Universe operates in exactly the same space.

This movie clearly loves the toys. It clearly respects the fans. But it also spends a significant amount of time pointing out just how absurd all of this is.

The laughs are huge. There are jokes built around character names. There are running gags involving Ram-Man. There are jokes involving Fisto that are exactly as immature and hilarious as you'd hope. There are endless moments where the film stops just short of looking directly into the camera and saying, "Can you believe somebody actually came up with this stuff?"

And somehow it works.

Nicholas Galitzine is terrific as Adam. He understands that the character starts out as a nervous, awkward, uncertain young man. His performance has a lot of charm and a surprising amount of heart. Camila Mendes is excellent as Teela, and Idris Elba has a lot of fun as Duncan, whose character arc takes some unexpected turns involving alcoholism, regret, and a fractured relationship with his daughter.

Then there's Jared Leto. Now, I am not always the biggest Jared Leto fan in the world, but he is absolutely hilarious here. His Skeletor is played with just the right balance of menace, theatricality, and self-awareness. The scenes between Leto and Alison Brie, who plays Evil-Lyn, are consistently funny. Brie understands exactly what movie she's in, and her timing is terrific.

The supporting cast is stacked with oddballs and weirdos, and every single one of them seems to be having a blast. But what surprised me even more than the comedy is that the movie actually works as an adventure film.

The action sequences are excellent. The special effects are terrific. The production design is colorful and imaginative. There's a spectacular extended chase sequence involving flying vehicles that really comes alive. The battle scenes are energetic and easy to follow, which is increasingly rare in giant modern blockbusters.

Technically, Travis Knight is one of the most gifted filmmakers working in this space. He understands visual storytelling. He understands pacing. He understands action geography. And perhaps most importantly, he understands that spectacle is only effective when it's attached to characters you actually care about.

But here's the thing that really made me fall in love with this movie. This isn't just a satire of toy properties. This isn't just a loving tribute to He-Man. This isn't just a clever and brutal takedown of Marvel and DC movies. This movie is an absolutely unapologetic love letter to Mike Hodges' 1980 version of Flash Gordon.

And if you're a fan of that movie (as I am) you are going to lose your mind. The influence is everywhere. The tone. The color palette. The self-aware camp. The over-the-top performances. The mixture of sincerity and absurdity. The understanding that fantasy can be simultaneously epic and ridiculous.

At one point, they even use a Queen song in a way that feels like a direct salute to the original Flash Gordon. And then over the closing credits, we get a new song by The Darkness featuring Brian May. That's not subtle. That's the filmmakers essentially standing up and announcing, "Yes, we love Flash Gordon too."

For decades I've waited for somebody to make a movie that understood why Flash Gordon works. Not why people laugh at it. Why people love it. Masters of the Universe understands that perfectly, like Flash Gordon, this movie embraces its silliness. It doesn't apologize for it. It celebrates it. And that's why it works.

The movie also has a surprisingly sweet message underneath all the jokes and chaos. It's about self-confidence. It's about finding strength within yourself. It's about overcoming fear. It's about discovering that you are capable of more than you think you are. These aren't revolutionary themes, but the movie presents them with enough sincerity that they land.

I laughed throughout the movie. I was entertained from beginning to end. The action worked. The satire worked. The characters worked. Most importantly, the movie consistently surprised me. I did not expect this film to be as smart as it is. I did not expect it to be as funny as it is. I did not expect it to be such a brutal and effective takedown of modern comic-book filmmaking.

And I certainly did not expect it to become the Flash Gordon homage I've been waiting forty-six years to see. But that's exactly what it is.

Masters of the Universe is one of the year's biggest surprises. It's funny, clever, self-aware, technically accomplished, and enormously entertaining. Travis Knight once again proves he's one of the most gifted filmmakers working in big-budget fantasy entertainment, and Mattel continues to show that it understands how to adapt its toy properties better than just about anyone else.

I had an absolute blast. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

2) SCARY MOVIE 6

After more than two decades away from the franchise they created, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, and Keenen Ivory Wayans return to the Scary Movie series with the sixth installment, which is officially titled Scary Movie, because apparently we're doing the legacy sequel thing now and pretending numbers are embarrassing.

This is essentially Scary Movie 6, although calling it that might require acknowledging the existence of the previous sequels, which nobody involved seems particularly eager to do.

The premise is simple enough. Twenty-six years after surviving the original Ghostface-inspired killings, Cindy Campbell, Brenda Meeks, Ray Wilkins, and Shorty Meeks find themselves targeted once again when a masked killer resurfaces.

Along the way, they encounter a nonstop barrage of parodies of modern horror films including Get Out, Nope, Longlegs, Sinners, Weapons, M3GAN, Smile, The Substance, Terrifier 3, the recent Scream movies, and about fifty other things that happened to cross somebody's mind during the writing process.

And when I say "nonstop barrage," I mean exactly that.

There isn't really a plot here. There isn't much structure. There aren't characters in any meaningful sense. There is simply an endless procession of references, cameos, fourth-wall breaks, callbacks, and scenes that recreate moments from other movies.

Now look, I'm not demanding narrative sophistication from a Scary Movie sequel. I don't need Ingmar Bergman. I don't need intricate character arcs. I don't need emotional depth. But I do need jokes. That's the problem. This movie doesn't really contain jokes. What it contains are references.

There's a huge difference.

A parody works when it takes something recognizable and twists it into a comic observation. It comments on the original. It exaggerates it. It exposes something absurd about it.

That's what the great parody filmmakers understood. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker understood it in Airplane! and Top Secret!. Keenen Ivory Wayans himself understood it brilliantly in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, one of the smartest and funniest spoofs ever made.

This movie seems to believe that simply recreating something is the joke.

Remember the kids running through the streets in Weapons? Here they recreate it. One kid gets hit by a car and flies across the moon. That's the joke.

Remember The Substance? Here they call it "The Stuff." That's the joke.

Remember Get Out? Marlon Wayans gets sucked into a chair. That's the joke.

Remember Wednesday Addams? Here her name is Tuesday. That's the joke.

Over and over and over again, the movie simply points at something you recognize and waits for applause. "Ding! I know that movie!" That's apparently the comedic strategy.

The result is ninety minutes of desperate flailing. Every possible reference gets hurled at the screen. Nothing is developed. Nothing is built. Scenes begin and end randomly.

Characters appear, disappear, and reappear for no reason. Fake trailers pop up in the middle of the movie. There are animated sequences. Musical numbers. Post-credit sketches. It's like somebody dumped every idea from a whiteboard onto the screen without bothering to connect any of it.

The vulgarity level is turned all the way up, which isn't automatically a problem. I love vulgar comedy when it's funny. Some of my favorite comedies are filthy. But here the sex jokes, pot jokes, penis jokes, butt plug jokes, oral sex jokes, and gay jokes all feel like they were written by thirteen-year-olds who just discovered swear words.

The humor has the sophistication of third-grade bathroom graffiti. There is a long sequence involving oral sex that's compared to rolling and lighting a joint. It's not offensive. It's just stupid.

There are endless marijuana jokes because Marlon's Shorty spends the entire movie high. There are so many weed jokes that I honestly think the ideal audience for this movie is someone who smoked fifteen joints immediately before entering the theater.

I was not high. As a result, I did not laugh. Well...I laughed three times. Maybe four.

One thing I will give the movie credit for is that it's completely unafraid to be obnoxious. Some of the material involving pronouns, identity politics, and cultural taboos is refreshingly reckless in a way that modern studio comedies usually avoid.

There's a subway sequence involving various horror villains and a murder victim whose pronouns become part of the discussion. A couple of those jokes actually land.

Unfortunately, even that sequence eventually turns into a direct lift of the famous hysterical-passenger gag from Airplane!, right down to people lining up to smack someone. So, even when the movie stumbles onto something mildly funny, it's borrowing somebody else's joke.

The cast deserves better.

Regina Hall is naturally funny and spends most of the movie trapped in material that goes nowhere. Anna Faris, who was one of the secret weapons of the original films, seems stranded between doing Jamie Lee Curtis from the recent Halloween movies and Neve Campbell from the newer Scream films.

Heidi Gardner, one of the funniest performers working today, is completely wasted in a one-scene Longlegs parody. Chris Elliott pops up. Cheri Oteri returns. Kenan Thompson appears in a fake trailer parodying an upcoming Michael Jackson biopic and manages to squeeze out a couple of genuine laughs because he's Kenan Thompson and that's what he does.

But all of these talented people are left standing around delivering references instead of jokes.

The standout performer, surprisingly, is Olivia Rose Keegan as Cindy's daughter Sara. She's genuinely terrific. Not only is she funny, but she's doing an incredibly accurate Anna Faris impression throughout the movie. Her physical comedy is strong, her timing is sharp, and she commits completely. Every scene she's in gets a little burst of energy that the rest of the movie desperately needs.

Without question, she's the MVP here.

I also have to admit that some of the material aimed specifically at Black audiences is refreshing. The Wayans brothers have always been willing to make comedy through a distinctly African-American lens, and some of those jokes and cultural observations have a flavor that's missing from most mainstream studio comedies. The movie occasionally comes alive during those moments.

Unfortunately, the writing itself still isn't very good.

There are a couple of genuinely funny ICE jokes. There are a few decent throwaway lines. The final ten minutes are actually the strongest part of the movie. The reveal of the killers leads to some surprisingly effective jokes about legacy sequels, reboots, younger replacement characters, and the endless recycling of intellectual property.

The irony, of course, is that the movie making those jokes is itself another unnecessary reboot.

The biggest laugh comes from a surprise cameo near the end. I won't spoil it, but the mystery guest arrives with only a few minutes left in the movie and instantly becomes the funniest thing in it. Unfortunately, by that point the movie is almost over.

And that's really the story of Scary Movie.

It's a ninety-minute avalanche of meta humor, fourth-wall breaks, references, callbacks, and horror-movie recreations that mistakes recognition for comedy. It never finds a perspective. It never develops a point of view. It never figures out what it's trying to satirize beyond simply reminding you that these movies exist.

What makes the whole thing especially disappointing is that Keenen Ivory Wayans once understood parody better than almost anybody. In Living Color was revolutionary. I'm Gonna Git You Sucka remains one of the great American spoofs.

There was a time when the Wayans family could take genre material and transform it into sharp, clever satire. This isn't that. This is as far removed from I'm Gonna Git You Sucka as you can possibly imagine.

It's lazy. It's sloppy. It's repetitive. It's almost completely devoid of actual satire. But I suppose it is consistent. The other Scary Movie sequels weren't very good either.

I chuckled a few times. I laughed once or twice. The cameo near the end is terrific. Everything else is a mess. - ⭐️1/2

3) CAROLINA CAROLINE

The lovers-on-the-run movie is one of the great American genres. It’s been around forever. You can trace it back to Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night. You can point to Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde. You can point to Terrence Malick’s Badlands.

There are dozens and dozens of examples of people hitting the road, falling in love, committing crimes, running from the law, and ultimately finding themselves trapped by the very freedom they thought they were chasing.

The problem is that when you make a movie in a genre this familiar, you have to bring something new to the table. Unfortunately, Carolina Caroline really doesn’t.

Directed by Adam Carter Rehmeier and starring Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner, this romantic crime thriller is perfectly competent. It’s well made. It’s reasonably entertaining. The performances are solid. It moves at a decent pace. But the entire time I was watching it, I kept thinking about other movies.

Better movies. More original movies. Movies that had already done everything this one is attempting to do and had done it much more effectively.

Samara Weaving plays Caroline, a young woman trapped in a dead-end existence working at a gas station in rural Texas. Raised by her father after her mother abandoned her as a baby, she dreams about escaping her small-town life and eventually finding the mother she’s never known.

One day she encounters Oliver, a charming drifter and con artist played by Kyle Gallner. Their relationship begins when she catches him pulling a short-change scam on her employer. Instead of turning him in, she becomes fascinated by him.

The two fall in love, hit the road together, begin running small cons throughout the South, and eventually escalate into bank robberies while searching for Caroline’s estranged mother. As the crimes become bigger and the danger increases, the relationship begins to fracture until everything inevitably spirals toward tragedy.

Sound familiar? Of course it does.

That’s because virtually every beat in this movie feels borrowed from somewhere else.

The opening sequence alone immediately reminded me of The Grifters. The way money is exchanged, the short-change scam, the introduction of the relationship through a confidence trick, it all brought to mind Stephen Frears’ magnificent 1990 adaptation of Jim Thompson’s novel starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening. The DNA of that movie is all over this thing.

Then there are shades of True Romance. There are echoes of the Coen Brothers everywhere. The quirky criminals. The offbeat Southern atmosphere. The bursts of violence.

The oddball side characters. At times it feels like Rehmeier is trying very hard to channel the Coens without really understanding what makes their work special in the first place.

And then there’s Badlands. And Bonnie and Clyde. And every other road-crime romance you can think of.

The movie never quite becomes its own thing. Now, that doesn’t mean it's bad, it's actually reasonably watchable.

The robbery sequences are well staged. Some of the heists are edited effectively and generate real tension. As the couple becomes more notorious and the police begin to close in, there are moments where the suspense works. Rehmeier clearly knows how to put a movie together, and there are stretches where the film moves along smoothly enough that you stay engaged.

But the entire time it feels like a collection of familiar pieces assembled from better movies.

Kyle Gallner, meanwhile, is essentially playing a variation of a character he has played before. In fact, I kept thinking about Strange Darling while watching this movie.

That film also relied heavily on two lead performances, violence, shifting power dynamics, and a style that owed a tremendous debt to filmmakers like the Coens. Gallner seems to be revisiting a lot of the same territory here. He’s perfectly fine, but there’s nothing particularly memorable about what he’s doing.

Samara Weaving, however, is another story. She’s good. Really good. In fact, she’s the reason the movie works as well as it does.

Weaving has consistently proven over the years that she’s willing to take risks and tackle material that isn’t always obvious. Whether she’s doing horror, comedy, thrillers, or action movies, she usually brings something extra to the table.

Here she elevates material that often feels recycled and overly familiar. Caroline could easily have been a stock character, another variation on the rebellious outlaw girlfriend we’ve seen a thousand times before. Weaving gives her a little more depth than that. She finds vulnerability, anger, sadness, and desperation underneath all the genre mechanics.

She’s carrying a lot of the movie on her shoulders.

Unfortunately, even her performance can’t completely overcome the screenplay’s reliance on clichés. The flashback structure doesn’t help either.

The movie opens with Caroline emerging from a motel room, vomiting on the side of the road, pulling a gun, stealing a truck, and driving away. It’s one of those storytelling devices where you know the movie is eventually going to circle back and explain how we got there.

The problem is that it never really adds much. Instead of creating mystery, it feels like a screenwriting trick designed to manufacture interest in a story that’s otherwise very straightforward. The flashbacks feel clunky and unnecessary.

Still, the movie remains reasonably engaging until one sequence arrives that completely changes the equation. And that sequence involves Kyra Sedgwick.

Honestly, I could almost recommend Carolina Caroline based entirely on this one scene.

After spending most of the movie searching for her mother, Caroline finally finds her. The reunion takes place in a bar, and what follows is, without question, the best scene in the movie.

Sedgwick plays Caroline’s alcoholic mother, and she absolutely walks away with the entire film. The scene begins quietly. Caroline approaches her nervously. The mother doesn’t initially realize who she is. Slowly, painfully, recognition begins to dawn. The writing becomes sharper. The direction becomes more focused. The performances suddenly operate on a completely different level.

For about ten minutes, Carolina Caroline stops being a collection of recycled crime-movie tropes and becomes a genuinely affecting drama. Sedgwick is extraordinary.

Every line reading lands. Every facial expression tells a story. Every painful realization feels authentic. She creates an entire character in a single scene and brings an emotional complexity that the rest of the movie largely lacks. It is by far the strongest material in the film.

In fact, once that scene ends, you almost wish the entire movie had been about that relationship instead of another lovers-on-the-run crime spree. Because for a brief moment, the movie finally becomes something special. Unfortunately, it can’t sustain that level.

Once the story returns to robberies, police pursuits, escalating violence, and the inevitable tragic ending, it settles back into familiar territory.

Nothing is particularly wrong with Carolina Caroline. It’s competently made. It’s reasonably well acted. Samara Weaving is very good. Kyra Sedgwick is phenomenal in a single standout sequence. The heists are decent. The pacing is fine. But there’s also nothing here that feels particularly fresh. This is the definition of a time-killer movie.

If you’re folding laundry on a Saturday afternoon and looking for something reasonably entertaining to stream, this will do the job. If you love the lovers-on-the-run genre, you’ll probably enjoy watching it unfold.

But if you’ve seen Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands, They Live by Night, True Romance, The Grifters, and the many other movies that have explored this territory before, there’s very little here that you haven’t already seen done better elsewhere.

Except for that scene with Kyra Sedgwick. That scene is terrific. The rest of the movie never quite catches up to it.

So while I admire parts of Carolina Caroline, and while I think Samara Weaving continues to prove herself as one of the more interesting actresses working today, I ultimately can’t recommend it.

It’s competent. It’s watchable. It’s occasionally effective.

But it never escapes the shadow of the many superior movies it spends its entire running time reminding you of. - ⭐️⭐️1/2

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