Film Buff Musings

Friday is a loafing, smoke-ringed comedy that plays out like a lazy afternoon you didn’t mean to remember but somehow always do. The plot is a line of laundry held up by two stoners and a handful of petty grievances, flapping gently in the breeze of South Central Los Angeles. Ice Cube, likable and relatable despite possessing a glare that could split concrete, plays Craig, recently jobless and exiled to his parents’ front porch, where nothing happens—at first. Chris Tucker enters like a firecracker tossed into a sandbox, nervous limbs and helium-laced exclamations in tow. He’s Smokey, the neighborhood weed diplomat with zero negotiation skills, and together they waste the day with the kind of unearned confidence exclusive to the unemployed. Tension builds not in arcs but in potholes—small, sudden, and full of trouble. A drug debt here, a neighborhood menace there, and just enough romance to pretend something emotional is at stake. But the funniest presence in the film is John Witherspoon as Craig’s father, Willie—loud, bewildered, and constantly on the brink of launching into a monologue no one asked for. He spends much of his time barging into rooms or complaining about the state of the bathroom, and his lines have the rhythm of someone who thinks every sentence might finally straighten you out. He doesn’t dominate the movie, but every time he turns up, he’s good for a laugh—sometimes two. Friday doesn’t try to be important, and that’s part of why it works. It’s light but sticky. And any film that tosses off “Bye, Felicia” like a used napkin and still ends up in the permanent vernacular of American slang deserves at least a slow nod and a porch swing.

Third time around and the Friday series starts to resemble a routine—familiar setup, louder delivery, slightly different wardrobe. It’s Christmastime in the neighborhood. Craig and Day-Day (Ice Cube and Mike Epps) are back, now patrolling a strip mall in security uniforms, with badges that look like they were printed at a booth in the back of a flea market. Their opening act: getting mugged by a man in a Santa suit who steals their rent money, their dignity, and most of the narrative structure. What passes for plot is just enough to string together a series of daylight vignettes—doorsteps, driveways, discount storefronts—each calibrated to allow someone to shout, flinch, or get chased. Terry Crews plays Damon, freshly paroled and introduced with “homosexual tendencies”—a joke that expired a decade before opening weekend. Katt Williams shows up in a fur coat and adjusts the volume of every scene by simply being in it. John Witherspoon, unbothered and precise, opens a barbecue stand and casually delivers the film’s only immortal line: “Tastes so good, make you wanna slap yo’ mama.” The original Friday had atmosphere and inertia—it knew how to let a joke breathe. This one keeps tightening its grip, afraid the audience might wander. Even the funny moments feel cornered. There’s life in the performances, but it’s surrounded on all sides by noise. The movie doesn’t fall apart—it just keeps going until it’s out of scenes.

By 2004, quick cuts and handheld camerawork were the fashion. But football—especially the high-stakes, small-town kind—might be the one subject where that aesthetic actually works. Friday Night Lights has style to spare, and while there’s not a ton of narrative depth, it’s hard to look away. The film made a splash when it opened, largely because it doesn’t pretend high school football is just a game. It’s about pressure, delusion, and what happens when one injury derails a dozen futures. Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), already charted for the NFL, tears a ligament and watches the future dissolve before the halftime whistle. His breakdown—curled up in his uncle’s car, begging through tears, “What am I gonna do now?”—is the film’s most unguarded moment, and one of the few times it slows down enough to take stock of the damage. Billy Bob Thornton plays the coach with quiet control, managing the town’s expectations, his team’s egos, and his own slipping authority. The rest of the team isn’t as clearly drawn, but the film captures the atmosphere: the silence of locker rooms, the ritual of pre-game prayers, the sound of bodies being thrown like they’re offering something up. It follows the usual structure—injury, loss, redemption, the big game—but doesn’t pretend that winning solves anything. Football is less a sport here than a shared delusion, a last-ditch belief that something matters. It’s not exactly rousing, and that’s the idea. This is high school football as quiet collapse: stylized, tense, and just clear-eyed enough to hurt.

A memory play in casserole form: warm, heavy, and a little overloaded, but hard to resist when it’s sitting in front of you. The film zigzags between decades like it’s chasing its own tail but manages to pull something real from the clutter. Jessica Tandy plays a nursing home raconteur who turns afternoon visits into oral history marathons—charming, long-winded, and maybe a little manipulative. Her audience is Evelyn (Kathy Bates), a housewife quietly wilting under marital routine, until Ninny’s stories pry something open. She listens—reluctantly at first. Then, hungrily. The tale she’s fed is of Whistle Stop, Alabama, a town with the good sense to be both long gone and fondly remembered. Idgie Threadgoode (Mary Stuart Masterson) stalks through it in a mood somewhere between Mark Twain and a bar fight—untamed, suspicious of etiquette, allergic to dresses. She once had a brother, lost him to a train, and hasn’t been told to sit still since. Ruth (Mary-Louise Parker), the late brother’s sweetheart, resolves to marrying a man with fists for manners and ends up finding her real family in Idgie. The film never announces the shape of their relationship, but it’s clear enough: protection, partnership, and something deeper that nobody in town has the vocabulary—or nerve—to label. The film moves like someone flipping through a photo album they’ve half memorized. There are digressions, some editorializing, a few stretches that don’t entirely hold—but the performances keep it grounded. Bates, in particular, sells Evelyn’s arc with a kind of weary precision; you believe every awkward pause, every cracked smile, every moment she decides to stop apologizing for taking up space. This is not exactly an elegant film, but it believes in the dignity of messy lives, and it tells its story with a kind of plainspoken insistence that becomes hard to ignore. There are better-structured films about the past and cleaner films about female friendship, but few that feel quite as stubbornly sure that ordinary people, given enough time and cornbread, might save each other.

A movie about Thanksgiving among friends that plays more like a mismatched potluck—everyone brings a dish, but every dish clashes. Malin Akerman and Kat Dennings star as Molly and Abby, best friends hosting a Friendsgiving packed with misfits, oddballs, and the usual over-the-top relatives. The setup has potential—there’s a long tradition of dysfunctional holiday comedies turning into something warm, or at least biting. But this one never finds a rhythm. It jerks from scene to scene, each louder than the last, like the film thinks volume might pass for energy. The humor leans hard on snarky one-upmanship, and nobody comes out ahead. Some of the cast—Wanda Sykes, Margaret Cho, Aisha Tyler—can wring laughs from thin material, but this script gives them almost nothing. They’re left flailing, trying to carve a turkey with a spoon. And when the film tries to get sincere, it doesn’t build to anything—it just stops, drops in a moment, and hopes you’ll feel something before it barrels back into noise. What’s left is a film that isn’t unwatchable, exactly. Just loud, strained, and kind of empty—like a guest who won’t stop talking and still somehow says nothing at all.

The Friendship Game starts like a Twilight Zone episode and ends like someone dropped a box of scrambled plotlines down the stairs. Four high school friends—Zooza, Cotton, Courtney, and Rob—buy a strange metallic orb at a yard sale. It looks like a goth paperweight and calls itself “The Friendship Game.” The idea: everyone places a hand on the orb, confesses something personal, and if the group stays together afterward, their collective bond is sealed forever. That’s the hook. Then the movie lets go of it completely. Cotton’s disappearance is the film’s first unraveling thread. She seems spooked at a party, pulls Courtney aside with a vague warning, then later sees Zooza and Rob in the middle of… something—maybe a hallucination, maybe just another unexplained moment. Then she’s gone. No context, no explanation—just the first of many things the movie shrugs off and moves past. From there, everything comes apart. Zooza mounts the occasional search, while a boy she babysits (Dylan Schombing) quietly combs through Cotton’s webcam footage like it’s a class project only he understands. List does what she can to hold focus while the rest flickers in and out—characters caught in scenes that barely explain themselves. The movie hints at a mystery, gestures toward a ghost story, and ends up delivering neither. It’s not incoherent in a bold or provocative way—it’s just scattered. Ambiguity becomes noise. And whatever the orb was supposed to represent—paranoia, grief, friendship, maybe nothing at all—is left behind like most of the plot.

A vampire film that sharpens its fangs but forgets how to bite. The 1985 original had a knowing smirk, a love for old-school horror theatrics, and the sense to let its lead vampire be both menacing and ridiculous. The remake, scripted by *Buffy the Vampire Slayer* alum Marti Noxon, understands that mix in theory but doesn’t quite resurrect the magic. Anton Yelchin plays Charley, a suburban Las Vegas teenager who gradually realizes his new next-door neighbor, Jerry (Colin Farrell), isn’t just some guy grilling steaks at all hours—he’s a vampire, and not the brooding, romantic kind. He’s more like a predatory housecat: playful, sadistic, and absolutely unbothered by being caught in the act. Charley enlists the help of Peter Vincent (David Tennant), a leather-clad, Vegas-showman version of a vampire hunter, though calling him an expert is generous. Where the original *Fright Night* leaned into its stylized gothic horror and practical effects, this one smooths out the edges until everything feels manufactured. The set pieces grow repetitive, the action sequences feel over-processed, and the comedy barely raises a smirk. Tennant throws himself into his role with a sort of manic desperation, but the film never quite figures out what to do with him. The one undeniable bright spot is Farrell, who treats the whole thing like an all-you-can-eat buffet—charming, menacing, and playing Jerry like he’s already picked out his next meal. A passable redo with an inspired villain, but if you want something with a pulse, go back to 1985.

From Prada to Nada is what happens when you try to modernize Sense and Sensibility by stripping it down to the bare premise and dressing it in branded gloss. It’s well-lit, reasonably styled, and filled with a cast attractive enough to resemble a department store window—but what’s missing is everything that makes stories like this work: interiority, tension, a pulse. The hook is clever in theory: Austen through a Mexican-American lens, where class, language, and cultural identity could have added texture to a familiar narrative. But the film barely glances at that potential before returning to shopping montages, canned awakenings, and romances built on chemistry that has to be assumed. The story follows sisters Nora (Camilla Belle), the responsible one, and Mary (Alexa Vega), the walking tantrum in designer heels. After their father dies, their inheritance vanishes, and their half-brother’s frosty wife offers them the basement in what used to be their own home. They decline and relocate to their grandmother’s house in Boyle Heights, where humility, perspective, and love are conveniently waiting. There’s lip service paid to cultural dislocation—the sisters code-switch, recoil from their new surroundings, and gradually adapt—but none of it lands with any weight. Nora joins a law office and falls, on cue, for a noble coworker. Mary flirts with a leather-jacketed dud until a safer option comes along. Every resolution arrives on schedule, as if delivered by courier. Everyone looks terrific. No one seems to be playing a person. It’s Austen refracted through identity politics and then drained of specificity. You don’t fault the concept. You just wish someone had actually explored it. What could’ve been a smart reimagining ends up feeling like a catalogue shoot with plot notes scribbled in the margins.

A satire that forgets what it’s satirizing, Fun with Dick and Jane plays like an executive’s idea of populism—wealthy suburbanites turned stick-up artists, minus the stick, the stakes, or anything resembling wit. Jim Carrey and Téa Leoni are cast as the title couple, casualties of corporate implosion who respond to financial ruin not with panic but with sitcom logic and a ski mask. The script gestures toward social critique, then dives headfirst into broad farce, where Carrey is deported for taking temp work and has to sprint through a desert to re-enter the country, as if he’d accidentally wandered into someone else’s political cartoon. Job loss is played like slapstick; petty crime like bad improv. They rob a coffee shop, then a bank, then the audience of sympathy. Even the big heist feels like a rehearsal for a better idea. Carrey moves through it with that twitchy grin and some recycled limbs from better roles, but his physicality curdles into pantomime without timing to back it up. Leoni is game, but the chemistry between them is studio-invented—two actors in parallel scenes, occasionally sharing oxygen. Somewhere beneath the pratfalls and casual deportation jokes, there’s an actual premise—one about the soft-padded downfall of upper-middle-class America, of wage decay disguised as lifestyle rebranding. But the movie isn’t interested in threading any of that. It throws on a goofy hat and calls it subversive. It’s not that Fun with Dick and Jane fails to make a point. It just doesn’t remember what the point was in the first place. It laughs at the rich, not because they deserve it, but because it’s easier than writing an ending.

Tobe Hooper takes a break from backwoods horror to dabble in carnival sleaze, swapping chainsaws for mechanical spooks and airbrushed monsters with the paint flaking off. The Funhouse has the setup of a dime-a-dozen slasher—four teenagers, a bad idea, a locked door, and something deformed lurking in the shadows—but Hooper isn’t just killing time until the blood starts flowing. He’s building a world of flickering bulbs and rusted ride tracks, where everything looks like it was assembled from parts of something else, including the people. The teenagers, blissfully unaware that the fun stops at closing time, decide to camp out inside a haunted house ride. Big mistake, bigger when they stumble into a murder committed by a masked freak whose face, once revealed, makes the mask seem like an act of mercy. This isn’t the polished menace of a Halloween villain or the grindhouse nightmare of Texas Chainsaw Massacre—this is something sad, confused, a monster who never had a chance at being anything else. That’s not to say he doesn’t get the job done. The kills, when they arrive, are nasty, mean, and more creative than the usual slasher fare. For all its carnival-barker aesthetics, The Funhouse actually takes its time. The first act lingers in the midway, soaking in the grotesque charm of traveling carnivals—the kind that have been making kids cry for decades. Hooper uses every inch of this space, stuffing it with horrors that were already terrifying before a single body drops. The haunted house itself is a claustrophobic masterpiece of chintzy animatronics and flickering lights, and once the chase starts, there’s nowhere to hide that won’t betray you with a stuttering laugh or a skeletal hand jerking forward on an old spring. The teenagers—Elizabeth Berridge’s final girl the clear standout—aren’t deep characters, but they’re given enough shading that it’s possible to care when things get bad. And things do get bad. Hooper stages a few truly white-knuckle sequences, pushing his carnival of horrors to its limits before shutting it down in spectacular fashion. It’s not his most harrowing work, but it’s one of his most visually engaging. For a slasher movie, that’s more than enough to buy a ticket.

If you still harbor any nostalgia for old-school Chevy Chase—the sly smirk, the strategic pratfall, the deadpan exasperation—you might find something mildly medicinal about Funny Money, a throwback farce that feels like it was made on the budget of one of Chase’s old craft services tabs. The film itself is a goofball caper built on mistaken identities, fake accents, and one very expensive briefcase swap. The surprise is that it almost works. Chase plays Henry Perkins, a mid-level executive at a wax fruit company whose career peaked around the time his pitch for bruised bananas was rejected by the firm’s owner (Robert Loggia, crusty as ever). Years later, a subordinate resurrects the same idea and is hailed as a genius, which Henry watches with the bemused resignation of a man who knows exactly where he stands on the corporate food chain. Then fate—or a clumsy mix-up on the subway—drops $5 million in cash into his lap. The mob wants it back. Henry wants to keep it. His wife (Penelope Ann Miller) just wants to make it through dinner. The setup clicks along nicely at first. Characters pile into the Perkins household: a detective, a CIA spook, some goons, a corpse that keeps changing names, and a string of guests with backstories so tangled even they can’t keep them straight. When Henry starts introducing himself as his own imaginary twin to throw off the cops, the farce begins folding in on itself like a card table with one leg too short. The whole thing feels slapped together—flat lighting, stagey movement, line deliveries that probably didn’t get a second take. But the cast keeps at it, and when the script stumbles onto something halfway funny, it usually sticks—if only because everyone’s too committed to blink. Chase still knows how to underplay a punchline and overplay a panic attack, and Miller makes a solid scene partner—exasperated, tipsy, and increasingly less shocked by what’s happening in her own living room. But the plot keeps opening new doors faster than it can close them, and by the time the film hits the finish line, it’s practically out of breath from chasing its own subplots. It’s an admirably silly effort, and there are a few genuine laughs buried in the confusion, but this one’s really for Chevy completists—the kind of viewer who doesn’t mind a little bruising on the banana.

A serious movie about—as the title suggests—funny people, and it’s convincing. By proximity, it’s also often very funny. Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a wildly successful former stand-up who traded his edge for fame, wealth, and a string of brain-dead Hollywood comedies. He lives in a mansion, eats alone, and watches old tapes of himself when he was still hungry. Then he gets hit with a diagnosis: a rare form of leukemia, with no guarantee of survival. In a bid to reconnect with something real, he returns to stand-up. It doesn’t go well. The guy who follows him, a struggling comic named Ira (Seth Rogen), takes the opportunity to roast him—hard. George is wounded but amused, and hires Ira as both joke writer and emotional sidekick. Their relationship, rooted in admiration, resentment, and low-key co-dependence, becomes the center of the film. It’s a long film—146 minutes—and at times it feels it. Especially in the final stretch, which shifts into romantic territory involving George’s old flame (Leslie Mann) and her husband (Eric Bana), a storyline that feels more like an extended detour than a necessary conclusion. But the core is strong: a terminally ill nihilist trying to re-engage with the thing he once loved, surrounded by people who either want to be him or escape him. The supporting cast—Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, and Aubrey Plaza—rounds out a believable circle of aspiring comics, each balancing ambition with awkwardness. And while the film doesn’t always know where it’s going, it gets a lot right about what it feels like to bomb, to flail, to need.

A prequel by designation, a companion piece by temperament, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga backfills the Fury Road mythos with sand-blasted solemnity. It’s the same world—same scorched palette, same engine-snarl poetry—but with fewer fireballs and more narrative spine. You can almost feel it explaining itself. Anya Taylor-Joy replaces Charlize Theron as a younger Furiosa—unscarred by war, but already learning to narrow her gaze. She’s abducted from the Green Place by the theatrical warlord Dementus—Chris Hemsworth, buried under facial hair and bad intentions—and spends the next ten years drifting across the wasteland, collecting scars and strategies. The film charts how she lost her arm, her softness, and her right to flinch—each loss feeding the woman who will one day seize a War Rig and never look back. The performances are sharp. Taylor-Joy simmers. Hemsworth grins like he’s playing a villain in his own bedtime story. But the rhythm wobbles. This isn’t Fury Road’s two-hour fever sprint—it’s a five-act revenge opera with labeled chapters and solemn title cards, like the story was adapted from a half-buried scroll. The world-building is rich. There’s history, lore, rituals of cruelty. But what Fury Road did with glances, Furiosa spells out. It’s more connective tissue than combustion. The cracked opera of Fury Road—that glorious noise of chrome and nerve—is replaced by something steadier, cleaner, less combustible. As a standalone, it’s strong—serious-minded, handsomely mounted, and committed to its heroine’s evolution. As a prequel, it mostly confirms what we already guessed. Not disposable, not essential. Just a little too reverent to roar.

Movie magic, but make it life or death—F/X takes a Hollywood special effects artist, stuffs him into a government conspiracy, and watches him improvise his way out with smoke, mirrors, and a few well-placed squibs. Bryan Brown, playing Rollie Tyler, is the kind of leading man who looks like he should be sipping whiskey between takes, but here he’s sprinting through a high-stakes setup where his knack for stage blood and trick bullets is suddenly a survival skill. He’s hired to fake the assassination of a mob informant (Jerry Orbach), a trick so convincing that the mob won’t bother finishing the job themselves. Simple, clean, and—unfortunately for Rollie—only the first act in a much larger mess. The feds get involved, bullets start flying, and before he knows it, our effects maestro is dodging real gunfire from men who have no appreciation for his craft. The film plays out as a polished cat-and-mouse game, moving briskly from one setup to the next, with Rollie using his movie magic expertise to outfox the various parties gunning for him. It’s a setup that’s as gimmicky as it is satisfying—there’s something inherently fun about watching a man turn the tricks of his trade against his enemies, rigging up distractions and illusions with the same kind of showmanship that would normally entertain an audience rather than keep him alive. Brown, ever likable, carries the film with ease, and Brian Dennehy provides sturdy support as a gruff cop whose involvement in all of this is best discovered along the way. The bones of F/X are pure B-movie, but the execution is slick, the pacing tight, and the premise sturdy enough to hold it all together. If F/X never quite transcends its B-movie DNA, that’s no real crime. The film delivers exactly what it promises: a sharp premise, a handful of genuinely clever set pieces, and a protagonist just crafty enough to keep things interesting. It’s slick, occasionally ridiculous, and perfectly suited for action movie night.

The first F/X was a clever little thriller about a special-effects artist who outsmarts hitmen and crooked feds using nothing but his Hollywood trickery and a knack for quick thinking. The sequel takes that premise, inflates it like a circus balloon, and watches it float off into sillier territory. Bryan Brown returns as Rollie Tyler, once again dragged into a mess that requires him to use his practical-effects wizardry to stay alive. This time, he’s roped into helping his detective friend (Brian Dennehy) solve a murder, and before long, he’s dodging bad guys, rigging elaborate illusions, and relying on a robotic clown that is, by all accounts, a terrible invention. The film’s biggest issue isn’t that it leans into gimmicks—F/X was always built on gimmicks—but that it trades tension for antics. The first film had Rollie thinking on his feet, turning movie magic into survival tactics. Here, he’s triggering a remote-controlled clown suit to flail its arms at armed criminals, and somehow that’s supposed to be effective. The chases are bigger, yet they feel weightless, like the film is simply running through a checklist of action beats without much concern for whether they actually work. Brown, still effortlessly watchable, plays it straight, which almost sells the nonsense. Dennehy, once again, does the gruff detective routine, grounding scenes that might otherwise feel weightless. The film itself is a slapdash attempt at recapturing what worked the first time, only now with sillier gadgets and an overreliance on the idea that a guy in a clown suit might pass for cutting-edge robotics.