"The Sheep Detectives"

 ☆☆☆½

Do not let it be said that The Sheep Detectives does not deliver on its promise. The movie features sheep detectives. They are trying to solve a murder. They are doing a better job than the local policeman, and they're a lot more charming.

The murder itself, of the flock's shepherd George (Hugh Jackman), is one that would be right at home in an Agatha Christie novel, and the movie ends with the policeman making a pronouncement about the real murderer (a red herring has been arrested) in front of the fully assembled cast. It's just like one of those Christie movies from the 1970s.

There is nothing that The Sheep Detectives claims to be that it isn't. It's sweet and silly, it's funny and intriguing, it's got what the literary community calls a "cozy murder" at its core, and it is acceptable for the whole family.

That latter point is not a small one. The Sheep Detectives isn't a kids' film—there really is a murder, and there are lots of discussions about things that will probably go over the heads of very young viewers. And yet, it's one that kids and can watch with parents, or that adults can watch on their own. It works on both levels, and when I saw it an unruly gaggle of kids in the front row was largely placated by the movie, but squirmed loudly during some of the talky parts.

After the movie told us whodunit and why, then got around to addressing some of the loose strings in the plot, one of the kids shouted out, "Can we just end the movie now?" If you're a grown-up, you may want to opt for an evening showing of The Sheep Detectives.

But you should opt for it. The Sheep Detectives, which was directed by an animation director named Kyle Balda (who is also surprisingly successful at the live-action bits), is genuinely delightful. Sure, we've seen talking-barnyard movies, before. No, we're never convinced that sheep really talk. And yet, the whole thing is charming and engaging and fulfilling — both as a sweet-natured comedy and as a murder-mystery.

Actors like Patrick Stewart, Bryan Cranston, Regina Hall, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Chris O'Dowd and Brett Goldstein provide the voices of the sheep, an largely manage to overcome the "who is that" problem of stunt-casting by creating real and vivid characters.

The humans are played by Jackman, Emma Thompson, Hong Chau and Nicholas Galitzine (Red, White and Royal Blue), and they've got just enough star power that The Sheep Detectives starts feeling like one of those live-action Disney movies starring Helen Hayes or Fred MacMurray ... just enough of a cast to feel "all-star." The entire movie has that sort of innocuous, funny, charming, engaging vibe.

It may be silly, but on many levels The Sheep Detective is exactly what it claims to be, and it's also exactly  the kind of movie people mean when they say, "They don't make 'em like that anymore." It turns out, they do. And they're just as enjoyable and fulfilling as ever. Just as silly and fluffy, too.

Viewed May 24, 2026 — Regal Sherman Oaks

1550

"Obsession"

 ☆☆½

Obsession continues a recent trend of horror films that mistake "slow burn" for "slow pacing." There's a corker of a story here, one more than a little inspired by that old chestnut "The Monkey's Paw," and a captivating central performance by Michael Johnston as a kid who makes a very, very bad decision.

Too much of it, though, is undone by a first act that proceeds with plodding momentum that favors long, slow camera moves and a plot that takes its time getting where it's going.

When it gets there, Obsession tries to make up for lost time by throwing almost too much at the screen, including lots of extreme violence and one image of a naked corpse that's so graphic and so disturbing that it's hard to fathom what was going through the MPAA's mind when they decided that this was an acceptable film for young audiences — who are, in the end, its target — to see. Obsession is not an obscene or fundamentally objectionable film, but it's maybe the best argument I've seen lately that the NC-17 rating has been all but forgotten.

The violence, including that corpse and—rather unforgettably—the way it became a corpse, are the unintended consequences of the bad decision Johnston's character, Bear, makes in his effort to persuade nubile young Nikki to feel about him the way he feels about her. That is, to obsess over him.

For reasons both unexplained and, based on the behavior of the character, a bit incomprehensible, Bear has an overwhelming crush on Nikki, his co-worker at a music store. One of the many things not entirely clear in the screenplay of Obsession is how old these characters are, but one of their other co-workers is awaiting college acceptance letters, so it's fair to assume they're not far removed from being teenagers.

They don't act like it, and they don't much act like it, but very few of the people in Obsession act much like real people. This is a movie that knows it's a movie, that is trading in some popular and well-tried tropes, and the shame is that Obsession has such a hard time getting off the ground that it makes the rest of the movie a little bit more of a slog than it should be.

There are also a lot of unanswered questions, and much in the way of last year's big horror hit Weapons, these oversights are either (depending on your point of view) almost unforgivably sloppy or intentionally vague enough to get fans chattering online. The latter has happened with Obsession, but the challenge to anyone who doesn't see the Internet discussions has to go with what's in the movie. And there's not enough.

The basic story is simple: Obsessed with his crush, Bear visits a mysterious shop (is there any other kind?) and buys a gag gift called a One Wish Willow. Break it, the package says, and your wish will come true. Got questions? Helpfully, there's a toll-free number. But calling it turns out to be ... unhelpful. And worrisome.

Naturally, Bear makes his wish. And wouldn't you know it? He doesn't really think it through. Nikki does start obsessing over him—immediately. Not long after, she starts taking it all to an extreme. And, boy, is it ever extreme. But why? What mysterious power has controlled her? Unclear. What about other people who use One Wish Willow? They must have stories. Why, yes. We see them for a few seconds. Otherwise, unclear. Why does Nikki resort to violence? Unclear. What role does the guy on the other end of that toll-free number play in all of it? Unclear. Why doesn't Bear just run away where he can't be found? Or call the police? Or take any of a dozen other actions of a rational person? Unclear. Is he really still in love with this unhinged monster? Unclear.

And the list goes on. Every question, it appears, has staunch defenders online, even though the only thing to really go on is the movie, which either plays coy or isn't complete. Johnston, particularly, sells it all well. He's a great "everyman" whose rising panic is convincing.

If only the rest of the movie were, too. At a minimum, Obsession is effective at what it's trying to do, which is disturb and unnerve audiences. The less familiar they are with the source material, the better. It's not so much that Obsession is a dumb movie; it's not. It's just maybe not as smart—or as complete—as it thinks it is.

Viewed May 23, 2026 — Regal Sherman Oaks

1550

"The Devil Wears Prada 2"

 ☆☆

Gird your loins, Miranda Priestly is back. And somehow, she's turned into a bore.

It took 20 years to make the sequel to 2006's breezy, lightweight and delightful The Devil Wears Prada, and you would think after 20 years they would have had lots of ideas. They didn't.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a mess, both conceptually and in execution. There are moments it's not quite clear whether the actors were even in the same room when they shot their scenes, and lots of moments where it's not quite clear anyone — the actors, the screenwriter, the director — quite knew what was supposed to be going on.

The real and unfortunate trick of The Devil Wears Prada 2 is that it makes Meryl Streep look like she's struggling. Her Miranda Priestly from the first film was sharp, cruel, dedicated and ruthless. Time hasn't been kind. This time around, Miranda dull, vacant, rather shockingly kind, and weirdly soft. A running gag is that, after 20 years, Miranda doesn't even recognize Andrea Sachs (Anne Hathaway) the woman who used to be her assistant at Runway magazine.

At least, it's supposed to be a gag. I think. The way it plays out in the film is that Miranda looks shockingly like someone should call a doctor, because she might be having a stroke or suffering from dementia. It's not funny that she does not recognize Andy; it's worrisome.

Miranda constantly tries to come up with cutting barb — and once in a while a few land — but her heart doesn't seem to be in it. During the film, we find out that Miranda has gotten married to a man played by Kenneth Branagh, though Branagh doesn't seem to know what he's doing in this picture. In most of his scenes, he looks genuinely surprised and vaguely unready for the camera.

The rest of the cast seems generally uninterested in what's happening. Emily Blunt returns, trying to look cold and aloof, imperious and smug, but mostly looking somewhere between vaguely crazed and terribly bored. Stanley Tucci is less the acerbic but wise mentor than the actor who knows he's fourth-billed but is trying to seem happy to be there. It's genuinely odd how little impact he makes this time around. And Anne Hathaway seems mildly distracted, which is understandable since this is just one of five films she's starring in this year.

The movie begins when Hathaway's Andy is winning an award for her work at a prestigious, fictional New York media outlet called The Vanguard. But the entire newsroom gets laid off by text. During the awards show. Andrea needs a job.

Well, would't you know it? Miranda Priestly needs a features editor! Lickety-split, the job falls to Andy, who is qualified by dint of having worked for Miranda or because the movie requires she go back there. Something like that.

And within minutes, Andy and Miranda are no longer frenemies, they're on a mission to save the magazine. First, the script has to find a way to bring them back together with Emily (Emily Blunt), and the way it does so is convoluted, adding in the barely-used Lucy Liu and the uncomfortable Justin Theroux, who may be stand-ins for Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. B.J. Novak shows up, too, looking confused, and there's a small role for an Australian hunk who looks like he wandered in from an episode of Sex and the City.

None of it makes much impact, so the filmmakers throw in cameos by Lady Gaga, Donatella Versace, and every wealthy media-industry socialite who was in the Hamptons last summer. The Devil Wears Prada 2 mostly exists as a sort of "three-dot column," mixing in a little gossip, a little plot, a little music (most of which sounds like the generic background noise in a hotel lobby), and a lot of wink-wink-nod-nods to the first film.

If that film hadn't existed, The Devil Wears Prada 2 wouldn't stand a chance on its own. Its inevitable success speaks volumes about the enduring appeal of the first, though this new film is destined to join Grease 2 and Exorcist II as extensions that seemed like a good idea at the time. But weren't.

Viewed May 10, 2026 — AMC Burbank 16

1430

"Blue Heron"

☆☆☆☆☆

For the first 40 minutes or so of the brief but potent Blue Heron, it's not quite clear what we're supposed to be tracking. Sophy Romvari's beautifully crafted film seems to be a memory piece about a girl's childhood in Canada during one languid summer in the early 2000s.

The girl, Sasha, observes her family closely. Mother and Father are Hungarian immigrants on Vancouver Island. Father has a job he does from home, something to do with computers and the Internet — if we never really grasp what he does, it makes complete sense: Like their missing first names, Blue Heron lets us understand about as much as Sasha does. This is a rare film that manages to present the world in the close-up, insular way of an observant child.

What Sasha notices most, as the mostly plotless first half of Blue Heron progresses, is that her family is close and loving and Mother and Father are wonderful parents, though, perhaps the adults watching these memories may notice, they are frustrated, confused, more than a little worried. The problem, it comes clear, is their oldest child, Jeremy.

Jeremy is never quite involved. He's always off on his own, keeping to himself, irritable, strange. No one can put their finger on it, but Jeremy turns an outing to the beach into a tense, worrisome afternoon. Then one day, the police show up with Jeremy in handcuffs. But that's not the worst of it. Someone else comes to the house, and on one warm and beautiful afternoon while the other kids play on the trampoline, Mother and Father are forced into a wrenching, life-changing decision.

The second part of Blue Heron does something extraordinary with the first half, and it seems almost unfair to explain too much. Suddenly, as the audience, we're watching another story. There's a different woman on screen, someone who's examining what happened during the first part of the movie.

As a filmmaker, Romvari's change-up here would be breathtaking and showy if presented in another way, but she's willing to keep it low-key, to let the audience figure things out for itself. Eventually, it is clear that Sasha as an adult is assuming the role of Romvari the filmmaker in trying to understand what has happened with her family, to make sense of what happened to the brother whose actions that summer led to a life of unanswered questions and deep sadness for Sasha.

An adult is not a child. A child cannot be an adult. The same person cannot bridge the gap in understanding between the two parts of their lives. The questions that had no answers to the child become the inevitable answers that make no sense to the adult.

In a truly staggering sequence, adult Sasha haunts her own life, and as she does it makes total, heartbreaking sense on screen — this is what we all do: revisit the hallways and bedrooms of our childhood, looking for answers to lives that make no sense at all, except, maybe, to us.

Blue Heron made the festival rounds in 2025, and is now receiving a small theatrical release, primarily at AMC Theaters. In what's already become a strong year for movies, Blue Heron is one of the best I've seen in 2026 — and is worth seeking out and being patient with it. Its many rewards are deeply worth the effort.

Viewed April 26, 2026 — AMC Burbank 16

1615

"Mother Mary"

   ☆☆☆½

Mother Mary is a movie with keen insight into human nature, into the way people form and then break attachments and what that does to everyone involved. Just as it starts getting really interesting and engrossing, it buries those insights in a strange and not entirely effective story of the paranormal.

The result is both satisfying and not, both insightful and surface-level, but never less than entirely captivating to watch. It's not the Black Swan-meets-Burlesque campfest that the trailers have been promising, but something deeper, weirder and more challenging.

Anne Hathaway gets the top billing, but Mother Mary belongs equally to her and to the phenomenal Michaela Coel, whose intensity both smolders and burns, especially in the first half of the film, which, it must be said, surpasses the second.

Hathaway plays "Mother Mary," a pop-star who makes Madonna or Lady Gaga look a little like B-listers. Religious iconography is her schtick, and whether the woman known as Mother Mary believes in what she sells is never revealed. But she wasn't always Mother Mary (her true name is never revealed). Once, she was another singer in search of an image.

Fashion designer Sam Anselm created the image. In essence, she created Mother Mary herself. Now, as Mary is about to embark on a comeback tour after a mysterious tragedy (it's revealed in the film, but I'd never think to spoil it here), there's something off. It's one of her dresses. The dress for her big number. It's ... how should she put it? Not her.

Only one person can set it right: Sam. So, Mary flies to London to meet with Sam and plead with her to create the dress she needs by Sunday. She gets to London on Thursday. The task is impossible, but Mary is desperate.

All this sounds like it might be a dull drama, but writer-director David Lowery (The Green Knight) infuses everything, from the first shot to the last, with a mystical, dread-laced tension. And, importantly, a human tension. Sam and Mary were once not just colleagues but close friends, but Sam has taken Mary's success personally, or Mary has forgotten Sam in her success. Either way, the wounds run deep.

Mother Mary is best as a two-hander between these two headstrong women, whose relationship was once more than close, it was symbiotic. They made each other. 

In its exploration of anger, guilt, regret and love, Mother Mary shines brightest. No scene in the entire film comes quite as close to the near-abuse Sam heaps upon Mary by forcing her to perform a physical dance routine from her concert — without the music. It's a rhythmic, writhing moment of near-madness, one in which Hathaway seems to be channeling Linda Blair from The Exorcist.

Mother Mary is also filled with the razzle-dazzle of giant-sized musical performances that are visually thrilling but musically bankrupt. If this is what passes for pop music these days, I'm glad I've aged out. The musical bits showcase Hathaway as an impressively believable pop star and some spectacular costumes, but they feel curiously flat. More thrilling are those moments with just Mary and Sam.

Then, somewhere along the way, Mother Mary turns into a tale of the paranormal, in which the guilt and anger between these two women seems to manifest itself in weird and violent ways. It's a real testament to Hathaway and Coel that the movie never fails to mesmerize, even when it starts going off the rails.

That it never entirely jumps the track but also never entirely reaches the heights of its first 30 minutes leaves Mother Mary as a film that feels both fulfilling and not. Dark, curious, challenging and eye-popping, Mother Mary, like its title character, tries just a little too hard to be something it's not entirely sure it really is.

Viewed April 20, 2026 — AMC Burbank 16

1610

"Exit 8"

  ☆☆☆½

Exit 8 opens with a man on his way to a temp job. He's riding in a packed Japanese subway train, and not everything is going well. When he exits the train, he gets some unexpected news, then promises the caller he's on his way.

He's not.

The man is never given a name other than The Lost Man, and given his temp job, his casual clothes on a train full of suited men, and his bedraggled appearance, that moniker may have more than one meaning. So, too, may Exit 8, though this isn't Last Year at Marienbad. Based on a video game, Exit 8 is puzzling and engaging, clever and diverting, and filled with symbolism and meaning, but it's not inscrutable.

Building on a 25-minute video game that is all about careful observation, director Genki Kawamura (who co-write the adaptation with Kentaro Hirase) has created a film filled with dread, a movie crafted to do two things, both of which it does well.

The first is to captivate the audience with its simple story: On his way out of the subway station, the man finds himself trapped in an endless loop. The promised Exit 8 never appears. Over and over, the man wanders the same set of geometric hallways, always seeing the same businessman, the same set of posters, the same set of doors. What's going on?

Eventually, the man finds a set of instructions. They promise that if he can follow each rule carefully eight times, he'll get to the exit.

Why? Who knows. But it works. And it sets up the second thing beautifully:

As the man encounters slightly different moments, as the hallways fill with increasingly worrisome sights and sounds, the audience sees what he misses. The small audience I was with shouted at the screen — "Go back!" "No!" "Turn around!" — and not in a way that damaged enjoyment of the movie.

Exit 8 puts you right there with this Lost Man, invested in the outcome and in his every decision, focused even more than he is on the backgrounds and the details, and equally frustrated when one mistake resets the whole of the game.

Just as it seems the idea is about to wear thin, this tight 95-minute puzzler offers up something new, and if some of what the subway exit throws the man's way seem random, that may just be because you weren't paying enough attention in the opening shots. Memory and trauma, both personal and collective, also factor in to the story, as does a healthy dose of Stanley Kubrick.

Not for nothing does Exit 8 feel a lot like roaming the hallways of the Overlook Hotel, and it's no coincidence that a gushing wall of blood seems a direct callback to The Shining — this is a movie that hopes to be as labyrinthine as Kubrick's, as stacked with hidden detail and meaning.

Over time, Exit 8 may well get the sort of die-hard audience it deserves, the kind who wants to count up every gleaming white tile to see if it all means something. Does it? I think so — and it seems salient that the one thing Exit 8 asks viewers to do is put their phones down and concentrate, to focus on the world on screen. And, when the lights go up, maybe on the world around them, too.

Viewed April 19, 2026 — AMC Universal 16

1350

"Project Hail Mary"

 ☆☆☆☆

Project Hail Mary is a popcorn flick, a movie whose primary, maybe even sole, ambition is to entertain and delight audiences who want to be transported by a good story well told. In that, it succeeds in ways that are genuinely admirable.

The directors of Project Hail Mary are Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who were famously fired because they wanted to make the Solo movie (as in Han) into something more comedic and lighthearted, and on the basis of Project Hail Mary that was a terrible decision for Star Wars.

Here's a science-fiction movie that takes its science rather considerably less seriously than it does its fiction, and while that might deviate Andy Weir's original novel (I didn't read it, though I did read his scientifically dense The Martian), it's exactly the right approach for the film. Even though Project Hail Mary is ostensibly about the end of life as we know it on Earth, it's fun and at times joyous, with characters that are charming and fun and often moving.

The story might be a lost episode of Star Trek: Sometime in the future, Earth is under an existential threat from an outside force. It's not a scary alien in a spaceship, rather an alien life form that is eating the sun. To be fair, it's not only picking on the sun — it seems to be devouring other stars in the galaxy, too. If nothing is done, life on Earth will end in ... well, it's never said, exactly. A lot of things are never fully said or explained in Project Hail Mary, which makes it both vague enough to be consistently interesting and also vague enough to be consistently frustrating.

Somehow, these life forms that devour the sun and stars also can be turned into a huge source of energy — which, scientists theorize, could propel a spaceship to the one star in the galaxy that seems to be immune. At least, I think that's what happens. It's all a little murky, in a messy, quirky, charming sort of way. Project Hail Mary is the kind of movie it's best to enjoy without asking too many questions.

Sandra Hüller, a genuinely compelling performer even in a relatively thankless role, is the person in charge of the project, and Ryan Gosling — a genuinely compelling performer whose looks make it easy to forget just how good he is in everything he does — is the scientist who makes key discoveries about the alien life form-slash-fuel source.

The story of how the mission is put together is told throughout roughly half of this non-linear film. The flashbacks are in widescreen, while the main narrative is told in big, "filmed for IMAX" full screen. (Both, sadly, will lose what makes them feel special on the home screen, and since this movie is funded by Amazon, you can expect it to be on small screens soon.)

In those "now" scenes, Gosling is Dr. Ryland Grace, who winds up the only surviving crew member. As he nears his destination — that immune planet — he runs across a giant alien spaceship piloted by a walking, talking, dancing (yup) rock named, wait for it, Rocky. This character is largely a puppet performed and voiced by James Ortiz.

Rocky comes from another planet whose star is under attacked. Like Grace, he's the only crew member left. The way they come together, clear their communication (and physical) hurdles and collaborate is the movie's backbone. It's adorable. It's charming. It feels totally right, thanks to Gosling's breezy, effortless performance that also flirts with deeper, more challenging emotions.

Together, they work on finding a solution to whatever exactly the problem is. They seem to understand it, so we understand it, and that's one of the beauties of the film: You don't need to grasp it all to enjoy it.

Project Hail Mary makes its plot work, and beautifully. There are quibbles — about the movie's science and its ways (or lack) of explaining things; an ending that feels too pat and perfect after some genuine moral complexity and ethical questioning about what is essentially a suicide-mission trip. At times, I found myself replaying the basic scenario in my head over and over, just to understand the stakes (at one point, a character literally describes "the stakes," underscoring the notion that movies made for streaming sometimes dumb things down too much).

But they are indeed mere nitpicks in an otherwise splendid movie, a film so full of life, vitality, fun and even — the word that seems out of fashion now — optimism that it's really hard to resist.

Viewed AMC Century City 15 — March 22, 2025

1600