Culture Representation: Taking place in Ongole, India, the comedy film “Vishnu Vinyasam” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A teacher at a junior college gets romantically involved with a female co-worker, whose parents seem desperate for her to get married, but terrible things keep happening to her suitors
Culture Audience: “Vishnu Vinyasam” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and subpar romantic comedies that have ridiculous plot twists.
Murli Sharma in “Vishnu Vinyasam” (Photo courtesy of Prathyangira Cinemas)
The romantic comedy “Vishnu Vinyasam” is a lot sillier than it needs to be. It’s a bungled and mindless story about man who falls in love with a woman whose suitors have unfortunate fates. The movie’s horoscope angle is mishandled.
Written and directed by Yadunaath Maruthi Rao, “Vishnu Vinyasam” takes place in Ongole, India. The movie has a one-joke tone to it that quickly wears out is welcome. The movie’s song-and-dance numbers are also tacky and not very entertaining to watch.
In “Vishnu Vinyasam,” superstitous bachelor Vishnu (played by Sree Vishnu) is a teacher at Prathiba Junior College, where he meets a 27-year-old bachelorette teacher named Manisha (played by Nayan Sarika), who seems to be the “perfect catch”: Manisha is a friendly personality. She’s pretty, intelligent, and seems to come from a very good family.
However, right from the beginning of the film, there’s are some major problems with Manisha’s personal life. Her family—led by her domineering father Srikanth (played by Srikanth Iyengar)—is overbearing and extremely meddling in wanting Manisha to get married. Manisha’s family members think they know best in choosing who Manisha’s husband should be.
The movie’s dreadful opening scene shows Manisha rejecting her family’s most recent choice for a potential husband. In desperation to get married to anyone except her family’s choices, she approaches four hoodlums on the street and asks if any of them is single. The four creeps say that only one of them is a bachelor, but Manisha can share a bed with all four of them.
The rest of “Vishnu Vinyasam” is a tiresome repeat loop of the antics and problems that occur when Vishnu and Manisha fall in love with each other, and he finds out bad things happen to men who try to court Manisha. There’s a nonsensical subplot about horoscope predictions. And then, there’s a surprise “reveal” at the ends that makes this awful movie even worse.
A lot of the acting in “Vishnu Vinyasam” is too over-the-top and shrill. There’s no believable romantic chemistry between Vishnu and Manisha. Murli Sharma has a supporting role as the story’s psychic narrator, who gives some background information on some of the characters.
“Vishnu Vinyasam” is just a pile-on of romantic comedy stereotypes, including the male protagonist having a goofy best friend. In this case, this sidekick’s name is Bunta (played by Satyem Rajesh), who is the very definition of a buffoon. People who like seeing adults act like immature teenagers in a romantic comedy might enjoy “Vishnu Vinyasam.” But everyone else will just be bored or annoyed by all this foolishness,
Prathyangira Cinemas released “Vishnu Vinyasam” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on February 27, 2026.
Pictured from left to right: Sudharshan (in back), Shivani Nagaram, Suhas and Vennela Kishore in “Hey Bhagawan” (Photo courtesy of Trishul Visionary Studios)
Culture Representation: Taking place in the Indian cities of Guntur and Hyderabad, the comedy/drama film “Hey Bhagawan” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A man finds out that his widower father has been covering up the fact that the father has owned and operated a brothel for many years.
Culture Audience: “Hey Bhagawan” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and terrible comedies about prostitution, pimps and how society reacts to people who are involved in the sex worker business.
Naresh and Annapurna in “Hey Bhagawan” (Photo courtesy of Trishul Visionary Studios)
“Hey Bhagawan” (also titled “Hey Balwanth”) is an incredibly tone-deaf comedy/drama that tries to make a pimp look like a hero. It’s also a very cowardly film that is afraid to use the word “brothel,” even though that’s the type of business at the center of this odious and badly acted movie. The movie thinks it’s being cute when it plays coy about the prostitution that is being used as the basis for all the idiotic jokes in this grossly sexist story. It’s not cute. It’s trashy exploitation.
Written and directed by Gopi Atchara, “Hey Bhagawan” takes place and was filmed primarily on location in the Indian cities of Guntur and Hyderabad. In India, the movie’s title was changed to “Hey Balwanth” by India’s Central Board of Film Certification, in order to avoid religious controversy because “bhagawan” is a Sanskrit-derived term meaning “lord” “god” or “blessed one.” Bhagawan is the last name of main family in the movie, but in India, these characters’ last name was also changed to Balwanth. Because this review is based on the movie’s release in the United States, the original title “Hey Bhagawan” is used in this review.
“Hey Bhagawan” has an uneven tone of being a wacky comedy for the first two-thirds of the story, and then the last third of the movie turns into semi-weepy melodramatic mush, where men with hero complexes think they can “save” the female sex workers from their lives of “sinful degradation.” Regardless of what people think about sex work/prostitution, there’s no doubt that the sex workers in this movie’s brothel are stuck in a dead-end job. That’s why it’s an insult to viewers’ intelligence when “Hey Bhagawan” tries to reframe this live-in brothel as a “hotel for happy hookers” while also putting forth the story that these sex workers need to be pitied and can have better lives if charitable men come along to rescue them. It’s also so repulsively misogynistic.
When people are so desperate for money that they do things that most people won’t do (such as being paid to have sex with people whom they wouldn’t have sex with if they weren’t be paid for it), they’re usually not happy about what they have to do for this money. And it’s why sex workers (who are almost always desperate for money) are vulnerable to being exploited. There is no way to get around the fact that pimps are part of this exploitation.
But “Hey Bhagawan” heinously glosses over these harsh realities by having the pimp in this story look like an overworked widower father who is just doing what he can so he can afford to send his son to elite schools. In the beginning of “Hey Bhagawan,” the pimp in question is Ram Bhagawan (played by Naresh), who is raising his son Krishna Bhagawan to believe that Ram is a successful and respected businessman. However, Ram is vague with his family about what type of business he does, and Ram won’t let his family visit him at his job.
Ram and Krishna live in Guntur with Ram’s widowed mother (played by Annapurna), who believes everything that Ram tells her. Ram has told his family that he has a “cottage industry” business. As a child, Krishna feels neglected by Ram, who spends more time at work than he does at home. Krishna grows up believing that his father Ram must have a job that’s very important. And so, Krishna spends his childhood thinking he should be a successful businessman, just like he thinks his father is.
When Krishna is about 12 or 13 years old, he begins to ask more questions about the job that Ram does. And what does Ram do? He sends Krishna away to live at a boarding school in Hyderabad. “Hey Bhagawan” tries to make it look like Ram is sending Krishna to get a good education, but it’s already shown in the beginning of the movie that Ram is a neglectful parent. That’s why Ram sending Krishna to a boarding school actually looks like a parent who doesn’t want to deal with raising a kid who’s starting to ask too many questions that Ram doesn’t want to answer.
At his boarding school, adolescent Ram brags about his father to everyone in his classrooms. His bragging reaches a point when one of Krishna’s teachers calls Ram. The teacher tells Ram about Krishna’s bragging.
And then, the teacher reveals the real reason why she called: She tells Ram that her teacher salary is “pathetic,” and she wants to know if Ram has any job openings at his business because she’s interested in working there. Ram says he can’t help her. Is this supposed to be funny? It’s not.
The movie then fast-fowards to 20 years later. Krishna (played by Suhas), who received his university education in Hyderabad, is a recent MBA graduate who has returned to Guntur to follow in his father’s footsteps as a “successful businessman.” To the dismay of Krishna, Ram vehemently tells Krishna that Krishna cannot work with Ram and cannot visit Ram at Ram’s job.
Krishna has a talkative and annoying sidekick friend named Banka (played by Sudharshan), who has some serious co-dependency issues because he rarely lives Krishna’s side. Banka accompanies Krishna to a job interview to work at a non-profit company called Mithra Foundation, which is looking for a business consultant. Banka is such a “joined at the hip” pal that he insists on sitting down next to Krishna for this interview. In fact, during the first part of the interview, Banka answers questions that Krishna is supposed to answer.
The interviewer is the company founder Mithra (played by Shivani Nagaram), a wealthy young philanthropist who’s about the same age as Krishna. Krishna is instantly smitten by Mithra and gets bashful during the interview, which is why Banka overcompensates by being a motormouth. Eventually, Krishna speaks for himself in the interview. He’s apparently so desperate for the job, he tells Mithra that he is willing to work for free. Krishna gets the job.
“Hey Bhagawan” is so poorly structured, it takes entirely too long (about half of this 135-minute movie) before Krishna finds out the truth about what Ram does as a job. Ram’s live-in brothel is called the Bhagawan Lodge, which has a big sign out front with the business name. For someone who’s trying to keep his brothel business a secret from his family, it’s incredibly stupid that Ram has his family surname as part of the business. But expecting an illogical movie like “Hey Bhagawan” to have any logic is like expecting a brothel to not have any sex workers.
And so, there’s a long stretch of “Hey Bhagawan” where Krishna desperately tries to keep “good girl” Mithra from finding out the truth about what Krishna’s father does for a living. Krishna is horrified and embarrassed and wants to find a way to shut down the brothel. Krishna’s father Ram refuses and doesn’t show much remorse for lying to Krishna, who is devastated by this lie. In fact, Ram tries to make Krishna feel guilty for being “ungrateful” for the money that Ram spent to give Krishna the best education possible.
And what a “coincidence”: Around the same time that Krishna finds out about the brothel that he wants to shut down, Ram ends up in a hospital because he had a stress-related health crisis. Ram is under medical orders to take a month-long leave of absence from his job. And so, Ram tells Krishna to temporarily take over for Ram in overseeing the brothel. The manager of the brothel is Ranjith (played by Vennela Kishore), a weird taskmaster who handles the day-to-day operations of scheduling and arranging the worker/client meetups.
“Hey Bhagawan” doesn’t actually show any sex. It’s another way that movie wants to use the “edgy” topic of sex work for tacky comedy purposes, without showing any sex work. There’s a scene where someone accidentally opens the door of a bedroom where one of the brothel’s sex workers is with a client. All that’s shown is a woman in lingerie in a playful pillow fight with a fully clothed client, as if they’re at a slumber party.
Even if “Hey Bhagawan” wants to be tame by not showing any sex, the movie doesn’t care to depict the brothel’s sex workers as anything but money-hungry, horny and/or in need of charity help from men. The only sex worker who is featured enough to have a story arc is a “happy hooker” named Champa (played by Shivani Nagaram), who begs Krishna not to shut down the brothel because she says she likes her job and she doesn’t want to be homeless. It’s later revealed that Ranjith has a crush on Champa, who has previously rejected his marriage proposals.
“Hey Bhagawan” goes off on clumsily placed tangents with a subplot about a member of the legislative assembly (MLA) named Durga Rao (played by Ajay Ghosh), who is trying to help his disgraced and ailing elderly politician father get back into the good graces of their political party. Mithra has a connection to this political family that is exactly what you think it might be. Also very predictable: Durga’s father has a scandal that certain people try to cover up. The movie takes a turn into unfunny morbid territory with a subplot about a corpse in the brothel and people pretending that the dead person is still alive.
“Hey Bhagawan” is off-putting enough with the movie’s horrible acting performances, irksome sitcom music/sound effects and moronic dialogue. But the movie becomes increasingly repugnant when trying to have it both ways in contradictory and muddled messaging about sex workers and the people who hire sex workers. The movie tries to make Ram’s sex workers look like they’re happy and “empowered” sex workers because Ram is a “good” pimp, even though Ram is actively exploiting them for his own financial gain. But then, the movie turns around and depicts these women sex workers as pitiful people who need help from men who have the money and intelligence to help them stop being sex workers and become “respectable” members of society. It all adds up to a garbage movie that’s not worth anyone’s time or money.
Trishul Visionary Studios released “Hey Bhagawan” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on February 20, 2026.
Juno Temple, Zazie Beetz, Michael Peña, Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Georgia Goodman and Asim Chaudhry in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” (Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)
Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States during various time dimensions, the sci-fi action comedy film “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people, Asians and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A disheveled time traveler arrives from the future to recruit people to stop an artificial intelligence (A.I.) apocalypse.
Culture Audience: “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and wacky apocalyptic comedies that might be too convoluted for some people.
Pictured from left to right: Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple, Michael Peña, Sam Rockwell, Zazie Beetz and Haley Lu Richardson in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” (Photo courtesy of Briarcliff Entertainment)
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” seems to be going for a similar wacky dimension-traveling vibe that was in the Oscar-winning 2022 movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” isn’t an Oscar-worthy movie, but this sci-fi action comedy has some impressive creativity in its story about a time traveler who recruits people to stop an A.I. apocalypse. This overstuffed movie falls short of greatness when it gets preachy about technology addiction. Some of the movie’s main characters are compelling, while other main characters are woefully underdeveloped.
Directed by Gore Verbinski and written by Matthew Robinson, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” had its world premiere at the 2025 edition of Fantastic Fest. The movie takes place in the United States in various time dimensions. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” was actually filmed in Cape Town, South Africa.
The concept of “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is quite basic (people try to stop an apocalypse from happening), but this 134-minute movie puffs up the concept with long chase scenes and backstory flashbacks for some of the characters. The visual effects are very good for a relatively low-budget independent film. Some of the cast members’ performances can hold viewer interest when the movie zigs and zags before it hurtles to an action-packed conclusion.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” begins by showing what looks like just another night at Norms, a kitschy-looking Los Angeles diner that wasn’t created for this movie but exists in real life. A disheveled man (played by Sam Rockwell), who’s wearing a bomb strapped to his tattered clothing, suddenly bursts into the diner and announces to everyone there that he is from the future. The movie never reveals what this man’s name is. In the movie’s end credits, he’s listed only as the Man From the Future.
The Man from the Future says, “This isn’t a robbery. I am from the future. And all of this has gone horribly wrong.” The Man From the Future then starts rambling: “Social media has eroded your dignity.” He says that in the future, too many people became addicted to looking at their phones in the morning, so they became bedridden and didn’t want to do anything else, so society collapsed.
“How many of you know any phone numbers?,” asks the Man from the Future, in reference to people not having to remember phone numbers that can be programmed in phones for automatic dialing and caller ID. The Man From the Future takes some people’s phones out of their hands and tosses the phones into some drinking glasses. “I’m looking for recruits,” he says. “Humanity can be saved. This is where the revolution begins.”
At first, customers in the diner mostly ignore the Man From the Future because he appears to be a mentally ill homeless person. But he starts to get more aggressive when he takes out a knife, which prompts concern among the diner’s customers and employees. The Man From the Future also announces that he has a bomb strapped to his clothes.
The Man From the Future further explains that this is the 117th time that he’s traveled to this diner at this exact same moment, with the exact same people inside the diner. He says he needs the right combination of people. He also mentions that he already knows which people in the diner have failed to be useful in this mission. The Man From the Future is aware that someone in the diner has called police to report him, so he knows his time is limited before the police arrive.
The Man From the Future chooses seven people to go on this mission with him: children’s party entertainer Ingrid (played by Haley Lu Richardson), homemaker Susan (played by Juno Temple), schoolteacher Mark (played by Michael Peña), schoolteacher Janet (played by Zazie Beetz), rideshare driver Scott (played by Asim Chaudhry) and two other people whose occupations are unknown: Marie (played by Georgia Goodman) and Bob (played by Daniel Barnett). Mark and Janet are a couple who work at the same high school, where Mark is a substitute teacher, and Janet is a member of the school’s permanent faculty.
Ingrid and Susan are the only ones in this group who volunteered. The rest of these “recruits” are being forced to participate in whatever the Man From the Future has in mind. The Man From the Future really didn’t want Ingrid to be part of this group and initially rejected her, but he reluctantly decided she could be one of the “recruits.” The movie eventually reveals why the Man From the Future is standoffish to Ingrid, who is dressed in a fairytale princess costume that she usually wears as part of her job.
The rest of the plot in “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” won’t be described in this review because it would give away too many details. However, it’s enough to say that some of the group’s adversaries include phone-addicted teenagers who become zombies; giant mutant cats; and a 9-year-old boy (played by Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) whom the Man From the Future says is the person who will be responsible for creating the A.I. that causes the apocalypse. And not everyone in this group of seven recruits makes it out alive.
The backstories of the Man From the Future, Ingrid and Susan have the most significance to what happens in the movie. Susan is grieving over the tragic loss of a family member. Ingrid, who has mysterious nosebleeds, is also recovering from heartbreak. Temple and Richardson bring a certain depth to their performances that make Susan and Ingrid stand out from the other recruits.
Rockwell’s performance as the Man From the Future is effective but somewhat of a rehash of the types of sarcastic eccentrics that he tends to portray in action movies. Chaudhry’s depiction of Scott should gets some laughs from viewers, since Scott is the token goofball of the group. Mark and Susan are a couple with opposite personalities—he’s insecure; she’s confident—but their characters are so underdeveloped, their backstory isn’t very interesting.
“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” has a lot of technology shaming and lays on this shaming very thick. Smartphones, computer tablets and virtual reality headsets are depicted as the paraphernalia that are the most common gateways to technology addiction. People under the age of 30 are especially portrayed as the worst offenders in spreading technology addiction. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” could’ve done a better job at lampooning the older adults who financially benefit from technology addiction.
The movie also skirts the issue that the technology addiction portrayed in the movie isn’t so much about the technology but about the way technology is being used for the addiction’s underlying motivation: an escape from reality to a world that the user thinks is better than the real world. With all the running around that the movie’s characters do to “save the world,” one big issue is ignored: Even if A.I. and other technology were erased, this erasure wouldn’t guarantee that people would be happier with their lives, and it wouldn’t guarantee that people couldn’t find other ways to escape from reality. “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” somewhat fumbles its intended messaging about technology, but the movie is entertaining enough to watch for people who just want to see a sci-fi action spectacle that isn’t as clever as it wants to be.
Briarcliff Entertainment released “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” in U.S. cinemas on February 13, 2026. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on February 2 and February 10, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York state and in New Jersey, the comedy/drama film “How to Make a Killing” (loosely based on the movie “Kind Hearts and Coronets” and the novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: A death-row inmate, whose execution is scheduled within the next 24 hours, tells a priest the story of how he ended up becoming a murderer who wanted to kill off all of his direct family members, in order to inherit a $28 billion fortune.
Culture Audience: “How to Make a Killing” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and preposterous stories about pre-meditated murder.
Margaret Qualley in “How to Make a Killing” (Photo by Ilze Kitshoff/A24)
“How to Make a Killing” starts with a shaky concept and then crumbles under the weight of its own foolishness. This unimpressive comedy/drama (about a disowned man who murders his relatives for a $28 billion inheritance) never looks believable. The last 20 minutes of the movie are especially egregious in how it throws in plot twists that make the movie a lot worse than it could’ve been.
Written and directed John Patton Ford, “How to Make a Killing” is loosely based on the 1949 film “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” which was loosely inspired by Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal.” That’s probably why many of the scenarios presented in “How to Make a Killing” (which takes place in the mid-2020s) don’t ring true in this day age of the police investigations and media coverage being directly impacted by the Internet and modern technology. “How to Make a Killing” takes place in New York state and in New Jersey, but the movie was actually filmed in South Africa.
“How to Make a Killing” begins by showing a death-row inmate named Becket Redfellow (played by Glen Powell) having one of his last meals before his scheduled execution, which is supposed to take place within the next 24 hours. Becket, who is in his cell, is being visited by a priest named Father Morris (played by Adrian Lukis), who is there to counsel Becket and hear any last confessions.
“The real story of why I’m here is not true,” Becket tells the priest. “The real story is impressive.” Becket (who was born in 1993) has a very long confession, which takes up about 85% of the movie’s screen time. This confession is told in flashback scenes. Becket tells his life story in these scenes, which detail how he became a serial killer. The movie also shows whether or not Becket gets executed.
As these scenes play out, it becomes obvious the movie expects viewers to believe that Becket is either the luckiest serial killer to avoid arrest when he’s the prime suspect in these murders, and/or the law enforcement officials investigating him are the most incompetent law enforcement officials who could possibly investigate. Becket obviously gets arrested at some point, but it takes an awfully long time for it to happen when he’s on law enforcement’s radar for being a suspected serial killer of his relatives.
Becket explains to Father Morris that his motive to get all of his family’s $28 billion wealth is revenge for his mother being disowned from the family for being an unwed teenager when she got pregnant and gave birth to Becket. Becket’s mother Mary Estella Redfellow (played by Nell Williams) was 18 and living a privileged billionaire heiress life in Huntington, New York, when she got pregnant. At the time, the Redfellow family had a fortune worth $18 billion to $19 billion. By the end of the movie, the fortune is worth about $28 billion.
Becket’s father Gary (played by Damien Wantenaar) was about the same age as Mary. Gary was a cellist in a classical music group hired to perform at a Redfellow family party. Mary and Gary had a short-term fling, which resulted in her unplanned pregnancy. Gary died in a car crash shortly after Mary told her domineering father Whitelaw Redfellow (played by Ed Harris) about being pregnant with Gary’s child. It’s implied that Gary’s car crash was no accident.
Mary refused to have an abortion or give the baby up for adoption, so she was disowned from the family. However, all of the Redfellow family inheritance wills are required to have a clause mandating that the fortune of a deceased family member must be passed down to the closest living family members, regardless if the family members are estranged or not. It has to do with keeping the Redfellow family business (a financial services conglomerate) controlled by family members.
Mary raised boyhood Becket (played by Grady Wilson) in working-class Belleville, New Jersey. Mary has been open in telling Becket about her biological family and why she was disowned. Despite being cut off from her family’s fortune, Mary was determined to give Becket the type of education that he would’ve had if they were wealthy.
At 8 or 9 years old, Becket is seen attending an elite private school, where he meets Julia Steinway (played by Maggie Toomey), who will go on to become an influential person in Becket’s life. In childhood, Becket and Julia like each other from the start. However, Julia knows that Becket’s single mother is not wealthy, so this social-class difference causes a divide between Julia and Becket. Becket’s embarrassment about not being rich enough to impress Julia is a recurring theme whenever he interacts with Julia, even in adulthood.
Shortly after Becket and Julia meet as childhood students, Becket’s mother dies of an unnamed terminal illness. On her deathbed, Mary tells Becket: “Promise you won’t quit until you have the right kind of life, the life you deserve.” Becket was put into the foster care system until he was 18 years old. The movie doesn’t show him as a foster child or when he was in his teens and 20s.
The movie’s flashbacks fast-forward to Becket in his mid-30s. He’s working as a clerk in an upscale New York City tailor shop called David Sinclair when Julia (played by Margaret Qualley) walks into the shop. Becket and Julia haven’t seen each other since they were children, but Julia immediately remembers Becket, who still feels some embarrassment about not being rich enough to impress Julia.
However, there’s an attraction between them, so Becket asks Julia out for a drink. Julia politely declines because she says she’s engaged to be married. Becket feels even more embarrassed because he didn’t notice Julia’s engagement ring until she showed him.
Based on the type of diamond ring it is, it looks like Julia’s soon-to-be husband can afford to give Julia the lifestyle to which she’s become accustomed. Julia is engaged to a businessman named Lyle Archdale (played by James Frecheville), who was a classmate student at the same school that Becket and Julia attended when Becket and Julia met. Julia tells Becket that after spending some time living overseas, she’s now settled down in Montclair, New Jersey.
After being rejected by Julia, Becket decides he’s going to fulfill his mother’s dying wish. However, his mother Mary never told Becket to kill off his remaining family members to inherit the family fortune. That was Becket’s own warped decision and his twisted way of getting “the right kind of life.”
The majority of “How to Make a Killing” shows how Becket plotted and schemed to murder his remaining direct family members. These are the relatives who are on Becket’s hit list:
Ted Redfellow (played by Raff Law), Becket’s youngest cousin, is a spoiled and hard-partying financial broker who works for the family’s company.
Warren Redfellow (played by Bill Camp), Becket’s second-oldest uncle/Ted’s father, seems to be the only ethical and kind person in the family.
Noah Redfellow (played by Zach Woods), Becket’s middle-oldest cousin, is a fame-hungry painter artist who markets himself on social media.
Steven Redfellow (played by Topher Grace), Becket’s oldest cousin, is an unscrupulous pastor leader of a megachurch.
Cassandra Redfellow (played by Bianca Amato), Becket’s aunt, is not in the movie long enough to show her personality, but she gives the impression of being shallow and vain.
McArthur Redfellow (played by Alexander Hanson), Becket’s oldest uncle, is also briefly seen in the movie as he shows off while flying his own small private plane.
Whitelaw Redfellow, Becket’s maternal grandfather, is the cruel patriarch responsible for exiling Mary from the family.
It’s not spoiler information to say that Becket commits murder because it’s established from the beginning of the film that Becket is on death row for being a murderer. However, this review won’t reveal how any of the Redfellow family members die and in which order. It’s enough to say that not all of the family members die by murder.
After his cousin Ted’s death, Becket introduces himself to Ted’s father Warren and reveals himself to be Mary’s child. Warren and Mary were siblings who used to be very close until she was exiled from the family. A grieving Warren is immediately accepting of Becket. Warren always hated the decision to disown Mary, so he gives Becket a job at the family’s company. Warren begins to treat Becket like a surrogate son.
Becket rises through the ranks at the company and becomes emotionally attached to Warren, the person in the family whom Becket is the most reluctant to kill. Becket eventually makes enough money at the company to become comfortably affluent, but that’s not enough for him. Becket still wants the entire family fortune for himself.
Becket also gets himself into an emotionally tricky situation when Noah’s girlfriend Ruth (played by Jessica Henwick) becomes romantically involved with Becket after Noah’s death. Becket is the one who pursued her after Noah died. Becket and Ruth had an instant attraction to each other when they met while Noah was still alive. Becket and Ruth bonded with each over their nerdy passion for literature. Dimwitted and superficial Noah scoffed at Ruth and Becket for being pretentious intellectuals.
At the time that Ruth and Becket met, Ruth was working for a denim company and going to school to become a literature teacher for high school students. The trailer for “How to Make a Killing” already reveals that Becket and Ruth become a couple. The movie shows what happens to their relationship and how Ruth handled Becket being convicted of murder and given a death sentence.
Meanwhile, married Julia pops in and out of Becket’s life and continues to flirt with him. She eventually reveals to Becket that her husband Lyle was dishonest with her about how much money he has. Lyle is actually finanically broke, but Julia (a socialite who doesn’t work) doesn’t want to divorce Lyle because she’s too proud to publicly admit she was conned and is in a dire financial situation. Julia’s greed and obsession with being wealthy are motives for what she does in the story.
With so many Redfellow family members dying in a relatively short period of time, it doesn’t take a genius to see who would benefit from inheriting the Redfellow family fortune. Becket also has the means and the opportunity (no alibi) for these murders, since he was in close proximity during all of the family member deaths that happened in the story. And yet, “How to Make a Killing” is quite pathetic in showing how Becket doesn’t get nearly the amount of scrutiny that he would in real life.
Only two FBI agents—Megan Pinfield (played by Phumi Tau) and Brad Matthews (played by Stevel Marc)—contact Becket to interview him and to let him know that he’s under investigation for these deaths in the Redfellow family. These two FBI agents are not seen again for long stretches of the movie before they show up again. There are no indications that Becket is under any type of surveillance. This lack of scrutiny emboldens Becket to plot more murders. Julia gets suspicious of Becket and has better investigative skills than the law enforcement in this movie.
“How to Make a Killing” also completely ignores the reality that all these deaths in an extremely wealthy family would get a lot of media attention. In this situation, Becket would definitely be the focus of that media attention, as the body count increases, but that type of media probe never happens in this brain-dead movie. A few of the deaths are made to look like accidents, but at least one death cannot be ruled as an accident and is definitely murder.
Even so, all these deaths in one very wealthy family would be enough for a large-scale investigation and intense media exposure. Becket shows no signs of physical aging in the parts of the story where he’s an adult, which is how you know that the murders happen within a relatively short period of time—four years or less. Two of the deaths happen so quickly, they’re shown in less than two minutes each in the movie.
Becket’s death-row execution timeline is also handled unrealistically. Even the most notorious serial killers on death row don’t get executed within a year or two after their prison sentencing, because most of these death-row prisoners use the appeals process to delay their executions. But there Becket is on death row, looking the same way that he did when he started becoming a serial killer.
In other words, “How to Make a Killing” is not only lazy and idiotic in crafting a story but also in the movie’s technical aspects. It wouldn’t have been difficult for the movie’s makeup and hairstyling departments to make Becket look older when he was on death row. The timeline for this story is so truncated, the plot twists that come in fast and loose toward the end of the movie look like something a child would fabricate when a child doesn’t know how to finish a story.
Powell has seemed to make a career out of playing smirking rebels and bad boys. “How to Make a Killing” is just more of the same typecasting for him. In the role of Julia, Qualley is portraying yet another seductress with her own agenda. There are fleeting moments that are genuinely funny, mostly in scenes with Woods as insecure attention-seeker Noah, and Grace as entitled jerk/con artist Steven. However, the rest of the movie’s supporting cast members play it straight with the very stereotyped characters that they’ve been given in this disappointing movie.
“How to Make a Killing” also has a condescending and off-putting message at the end, where Becket (in a voiceover) makes a preachy comment that viewers will probably be upset because the movie’s ending is not what most viewers are expecting because people have been programmed to think a certain way about crime, punishment and morality. It’s a comment made with a smug filmmaker tone that seems to be saying, “We’re smarter than the average viewer.” Actually, viewers usually don’t get upset by unconventional endings. Viewers get upset when they’ve wasted their time watching a cynical, dull and creatively barren movie like “How to Make a Killing.”
A24 released “How to Make a Killing” in U.S. cinemas on February 20, 2026. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on February 17, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in India and in South Korea, in 2025, the comedy film “Funky” features an all-Asian cast of characters representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An arrogant director has power struggles and a volatile romance with the producer daughter of the movie’s main investor/producer, as they all have different ideas of how to make the movie.
Culture Audience: “Funky” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and incoherent and sloppily made comedies that are too hyper for their own good.
Naresh in “Funky” (Photo courtesy of Srikara Studios)
The comedy flop “Funky” fails to be funny with its lackluster story about a male director and a female producer working together on the same film and pretending that they’re not in love. The jokes are tedious, the film editing is erratic, and the performances are annoying. This is yet another long-winded movie that stretches its flimsy plot to the breaking point. The movie’s 145-minute total running time is an endurance test.
Directed by K. V. Anudeep (who co-wrote the atrocious “Funky” screenplay with Mohan Sato), “Funky takes place in India and in South Korea, in 2025. The movie’s scenes in India are mainly in the city of Hyderabad, where “Funky” was filmed on location. “Funky” is a movie about making a movie titled “Funky,” but there’s not nearly enough moviemaking depicted in this dreadful dud. Instead, most of the characters spend their time bickering or running around and wasting time.
Komal (played by Vishwak Sen) is a hotshot celebrity film director who is seen near the beginning of the movie arriving at the co-ed middle school where he graduated from many years ago. Komal, who is arrogant but not very intelligent, is there to give a speech to the students. It’s an example of one of many scenes that are clumsily written and poorly acted.
Meanwhile, a wealthy film producer named Sudarshan (played by Naresh, also known as K. Naresh Murthy) is bedridden from stress because his most recent movie has gone way over budget. Production has shut down on the movie for this reason. Sudarshan plans to restart the production with a new director who can finish the movie on a much lower budget,
Sudarshan gives his producer daughter Chitra (played by Kayadu Lohar) the task of finding a director who can finish the movie on a budget of only one crore. In 2025, one crore was only about $110,000 in U.S. dollars. Chitra comes up with the idea to hire Komal, who hesitates about this offer at first, but then he accepts the offer.
It just so happens that Chitra is also an actress, and Komal has had a crush on her for a very long time. Chitra, who can be just as stubborn as Komal, has repeatedly rejected Komal’s requests to star in one of his movies. But now, Komal is the director of this movie, and Chitra wants him to finish the movie on a very small budget, which is why he persuades Chitra to star in the movie.
Komal has three sidekick friends who have clownish personalities and keep showing up like the Three Stooges with nothing better to do with their time. Unlike the Three Stooges, these three pals do not have memorable personalities or amusing dialogue. Komal secretly confides in his friends that he plans to charm Chitra into giving him more money for the movie.
You know where all of this is going, of course. It’s already revealed in the “Funky” trailer that Komal and Chitra have a volatile romance where they spend a lot of time denying that they’ve fallen in love with each other. A lot of their arguments are about how their movie is going to be made.
One of the first things they disagree about is the title of the film, which was originally called “Blockbuster.” Chitra is the one who wants to change the title to “Funky,” and she eventually gets her way. There’s also a detour in the plot when Komal and Chitra go to a South Korean film festival together.
What is “Funky” (the movie within the “Funky” movie) about exactly? Don’t expect any clear answers. It’s a vague story about a romance, where Komal suggests an idea for the man and the woman in this couple to propose marriage to each other. It’s all so very uninteresting.
Meanwhile, there’s a not-funny-at-all subplot about a gangster named GK (played by Sampath Raj), who somehow gets mixed up in all the shenanigans of Komal and Chitra. One of the movie’s “joke” scenarios about GK is that he gets a psychic reading telling him that he has two wives. GK says he’s a bachelor.
Ironically, for an overly hyper movie that doesn’t seem to know the meaning of “attention span,” the frenetic pace of “Funky” will make viewers feel bored, uninterested, and easily distracted by other things, because “Funky” jumps from one scene to the next with little regard for making the scenes cohesive. The cast members’ performances are subpar and strain to be entertaining. The word “funky” can either mean “stylish with good rhythm,” or it can mean “unpleasant and musty.” This rambling and irritating film definitely falls into the latter category.
Srikara Studios released “Funky” in select U.S. cinemas and in India on February 13, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Kansas (and briefly in Italy, Australia, and North Carolina), in 2007 and in 2025, the sci-fi horror comedy “Cold Storage” (based on David Koepp’s novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people, Asians and indigenous people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A deadly green fungus, which was secretly placed in a storage facility by the U.S. Army, becomes unleashed, leading to several gory deaths, and only a small group of people know how to stop the fungus.
Culture Audience: “Cold Storage” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners, the movie on which the book is based, and horror comedies where most of the comedic situations are from “gross-out” body horror.
Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville in “Cold Storage” (Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films)
The sci-fi horror comedy “Cold Storage” is a mix of gory and goofy in this story about a deadly green fungus that’s unleashed from a Kansas storage facility. The movie also has wry observations of military corruption and worker exploitation. It’s a fairly straightforward horror comedy where the “splatterfest” that takes place is intended to evoke scares and laughs at the same time.
Directed by Jonny Campbell and written by David Koepp, “Cold Storage” is based on Koepp’s 2019 novel of the same name. The movie starts off in 2007 and then fast-forwards to 2025, when most of the story takes place. Most of the horror action takes place in Atchison, Kansas, but there are also a few scenes taking place in Australia and in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Cold Storage” was actually filmed in Morocco and Italy.
“Cold Storage” begins with a captioned introduction referring to the real-life incident involving the U.S. space station Skylab on July 11, 1979. In this incident Skylab re-entered Earth’s atmosphere earlier than anticipated and “fell out of the sky.” “Most of the debris burned on re-entry,” the caption explains. “Some [of the debris] landed on Earth,” specifically, the Indian Ocean and Western Australia.
In 2007, Dr. Hero Martins (played by Sosie Bacon), an American research microbiologist who works as a consultant for NASA, is relaxing at a cafe in Rome when she gets an emergency phone call patched in to her by NASA. The caller is Enos Namatjira (played by Rob Collins), a resident of Kiwirrkurra, Australia, a rural community located in Western Australia’s Gibson Desert. Enos frantically tells Hero that a tank is there and that something terrible is happening to everyone in Kiwirrkurra. A major windstorm is happening where Enos is, so part of what he says is hard for Hero to understand.
However, 27 hours later, Hero has arrived in Kiwirrkurra with two officials from the U.S. Army: Major Robert Quinn (played by Liam Neeson) and Lieutenant Colonel Trina Romano (played by Lesley Manville), who investigate what turned out to be a mysterious plague that killed everyone in Kiwirrkurra. The “tank” that Enos was talking about was a NASA oxygen tank that fell from space. The tank was believed to have been a remnant of the Skylab disaster.
It’s revealed early on the movie that this oxygen tank, which was sent up with Skylab, had a terrestrial fungus. Enos had taken the tank and opened a Skylab Museum to showcase the tank. When Enos called, he reported an outbreak of unknown origin. Hero, Robert and Trina (all wearing hazmat suits) soon discover dead bodies where everyone looks like they exploded before they died. Many of the bodies are found on a roof, as if they were trying to escape on an elevated platform.
Hero finds the tank and does an X-ray examination. There’s a living green organism in the tank that suddenly lunges in Hero’s direction, even though the tank is closed. Hero finds a small, dime-sized patch of green fungus on a building surface and takes it as a sample. It’s decided that because this is a hazardous disaster area with no survivors nearby, the U.S. Army will have to blow up the area.
Just as Hero, Robert and Trina are about to leave, Hero shows signs of being infected. Her condition quickly escalates to where the green fungus appears all over her body. She becomes irrational and starts to see Robert and Trina as enemies. This review won’t reveal everything that happens, but it’s enough to say that things do not end well for Hero.
Robert and Trina recommend that the U.S. Army store this fungus in a secret storage facility in Atchison, Kansas. It’s later revealed that the fungus was buried in a container in a secret underground laboratory-styled warehouse located 400 feet below the storage facility. Over the next 18 years, the storage facility went through many changes, including the U.S. Army selling the storage facility to a private business, without telling the current owner about the secret underground warehouse with the deadly fungus.
In 2025, the storage facility is now called Atchison Self-Storage, which is owned by a sleazy criminal named Darryl Griffin (played by Gavin Spokes), who uses the facility to store stolen big-screen TVs, which he sells to other thieves for a profit. A conversation in the movie also reveals that Darryl sexually harasses his female employees. “Cold Storage” is mostly about what happens one night during a late shift at Atchison Self-Storage.
There are two Atchison Self-Storage employees who are on duty as security personnel: a motormouth misfit named Teacake (played by Joe Keery) and a sarcastic intellectual named Naomi (played by Georgina Campbell, no relation to “Cold Storage” director Jonny Campbell), who has been recently hired at Atchison Self-Storage. Teacake needs the job because he’s on parole. Teacake later tells Naomi that he spent time in prison after being set up for a theft he didn’t commit. Later in the movie, Teacake tells Naomi what his real name is and how he got the nickname Teacake.
Naomi, who is 24 years old and a veterinary school student, has the job because she needs the money to pay for expenses. She has a 6-year-old daughter named Sarah (played by Vanessa Popkova and Valentina Popkova), with a nitwit named Mike (played by Aaron Heffernan), whose relationship with Sarah goes back to when they were in high school. Whatever love Naomi might have had for Mike is now gone. She clearly despises him and calls him a “hopeless man-child” when she describes Mike to Teacake. It’s unclear if Naomi and Mike are still a couple, but Mike definitely acts possessive of Naomi, because Mike constantly calls Naomi while she’s working and eventually shows up at the storage facility because she won’t return his phone calls.
In the first scene showing Atchison Self-Storage, Darryl tries and fails to convince Teacake to help the thieves who will be arriving later to pick up the stolen TVs. Teacake refuses because he doesn’t want to do anything that could send him back to prison. Darryl is frustrated because he normally doesn’t go to the storage facility at night, in order not to implicate himself in helping the thieves move the TVs out of the facility.
Before Darryl leaves, he orders Teacake to find out the source of a mysterious beeping sound that he’s been hearing in the storage facility. Because Teacake refused to help Darryl with the stolen TV scam, you just know that Darryl will come back at some point to oversee how these TVs will be moved out of the storage facility. Darryl’s fate can easily be predicted in a movie like “Cold Storage,” but it will still give some viewers plenty of satisfaction to see what happens.
Meanwhile, Teacake hears the beeping sound. Naomi doesn’t hear it at first, but then she hears the sound too. Teacake and Naomi find out that the beeping sound is coming from behind a thin drywall, which they decide to tear through. Behind the drywall, they find a map and a ladder leading down to the unknown. Vanessa Redgrave has a small supporting role as an Atchison Self-Storage customer named Mary Rooney, who has the misfortune of being at the storage facility on the night when things turn into chaos.
It’s no mystery in this movie’s plot that the fungus gets loose and wreaks havoc. The rest of “Cold Storage” is about what happens when the fungus (which spreads like ooze) is discovered at this storage facility. Infections occur if anyone comes into unprotected physical contact with the fungus. Humans aren’t the only ones who get infected. A cat and a deer are among the animals that are also shown getting infected.
Sensitive viewers should be warned: The scenes involving the fungus infections and death are very explicit. At some point in the infection process, the infected individual vomits green bile. This isn’t normal-looking vomiting. It’s the type of intense vomit projectile that can be compared to a snow cannon machine in motion. The movie’s visual effects are better than the average low-budget independent horror movie that has visual effects.
The U.S. Army finds out about this outbreak at Atchison Self-Storage. And so, even though Robert (currently living in Raleigh) and Trina are retired, they’re soon on the scene to help. Robert has an old U.S. Army nemesis named Wesley Jerabek (played by Richard Brake), who was the one who decided to sell the storage facility to a private business owner without telling the owner about the deadly fungus stored inside. Wesley is still a high-ranking U.S. Army official, and he wants to suppress any reports or military assistance involving this outbreak. One of his subordinates, using the code name Abigail (played by Ellora Torchia), defies Wesley’s orders when Robert contacts her.
“Cold Storage” doesn’t have much of a plot beyond showing who will survive this outbreak and how they survive. (And it’s very easy to predict who dies and who lives.) The performances are serviceable, with good comedic timing from all the cast members. However, “Cold Storage” is the type of horror movie where the concept outshines the characters. The movie isn’t constantly laugh-out-loud funny. Most viewers will get at least some mild chuckles out of watching it.
As far as the “Cold Storage” characters go, the banter between Teacake and Naomi is the heart of the movie’s dialogue. What starts out as awkward co-worker interaction between Teacake and Noami turns into mutual attraction and respect. Robert and Trina have a sometimes-prickly, sometimes-cuddly rapport with each other that’s also entertaining to watch. “Cold Storage” is a horror movie that puts a lot of emphasis on gross-out splatter scenes, but there’s still enough humanity to make the main characters relatable to a lot of viewers.
Samuel Goldwyn Films released “Cold Storage” in U.S. cinemas on February 13, 2026. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on March 6, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in Toronto, in 2025 and in 2008, the comedy film “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” (based on the 2016-2018 TV series “Nirvanna the Band the Show”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: Two musicians who perform as Nirvanna try book a gig at the Rivoli nightclub and find themselves transported from the year 2025 to 2008, the year they were supposed to play at the Rivoli, but the show was canceled.
Culture Audience: “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and mockumentaries that have a lot of improvisation.
Jay McCarrol and Matt Johnson in “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” (Photo courtesy of Neon)
You’ll know within the first 15 minutes of watching “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” if you want to stay for the rest of this wacky and hilarious ride. Part mockumentary, part “Back to the Future” tribute, this comedy follows two hapless musicians stuck in 2008, while trying to book a gig in Toronto, with their camper van as an unexpected time machine. Fans of comedy films directed by Christopher Guest or Sacha Baron Cohen will probably like “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie.” Everyone else might find the movie unappealing or an acquired taste.
Directed by Matt Johnson, “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” was co-written by Johnson and Jay McCarrol, who both star as versions of themselves in the movie. “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The movie takes place in 2025 and in 2008 in Toronto, where “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” was filmed on location. “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” is based on the 2016-2018 Viceland TV series “Nirvanna the Band the Show,” which was created by Johnson and McCarrol.
For the purposes of this review, the characters that Johnson and McCarrol play in the movie will be referred to by their first names, while the real Johnson and McCarrol will be referred to by their last names. “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” begins in 2008, when Matt and Jay (a musical duo called Nirvanna) are seen rehearsing in their living room. Matt is the vocalist who does improvised spoken word performances. Jay (nicknamed Bird) is a pianist/keyboardist. Their style of music can be described as indie pop/rock performance art.
Matt and Jay are excited because they’ve booked a gig at the Trivoli, a nightclub in Toronto. Matt is the hyper “ideas guy,” who writes a lot of his schemes on a white board. Jay is more laid-back and sensible musical partner/best friend. Matt says excitedly, “I have a feeling things are going to work out for us.”
Seventeen years later, it’s revealed that Matt and Jay never did play at the Rivoli. Matt suddenly gets inspired to try booking a gig at the Rivoli again. He digs up an old idea, called Seventh Inning Skydive, a publicity stunt that would have Matt and Jay skydive from the CN Tower into Toronto’s SkyDome stadium during the seventh inning of a baseball game.
Jay is somewhat reluctant but goes along with this plan, which involves a lot of fast-talking and sneaking around to turn this plan into reality. Matt and Jay are all set to take the leap from the CN Tower when they see the SkyDome’s top start to close, making it impossible for Matt to skydive into the SkyDome during the seventh inning of the baseball game. It’s another failed attempt at Nirvanna’s 15 minutes of fame.
Back in their camper van, driver Matt crashes into a magazine dispenser. When Jay and Matt get out of the van, they see the 2008 versions of themselves hanging up Nirvanna flyers on street poles. Matt and Jay also see indications everywhere that it’s 2008, including a photo of Bill Cosby on a magazine and a movie theater playing “Hancock” and “The Hangover.” (This is a trivial mistake because “The Hangover” actually was released in 2009, not 2008.)
When Jay and Matt go back to their apartment, they see they have bottles of Orbitz, a non-carbonated drink brand that launched in 1996 and was discontinued in 1998. Jay and Matt are now convinced that it’s really 2008. They also find out that their camper van is a time machine. Matt wants to seize the opportunity to rewrite history and the fortunes of Nirvanna. But what does rewriting history mean if they can’t get back to 2025? Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Matt, Jay secretly booked a solo gig for himself.
This review won’t describe what happens in the rest of “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” because that would give away a lot of the movie’s jokes and comedic scenarios. It’s enough to say that Johnson and McCarrol do justice to the TV series with this movie, although some of the jokes start to wear a bit thin toward the end. Even with some flaws, “Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie” is worth watching for anyone who roots for underdogs and enjoys comedies that are made like absurd documentaries.
Neon released “Nirvannna the Band the Show the Movie” in select U.S. cinemas on February 13, 2026. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on February 9, 2026.
Some language in Arabic and Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in Barstow, California, in 2006, the comedy film “Atropia” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Arabic, Latin and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: An actress employed at a war simulation facility struggles to get respect from those around her.
Culture Audience: “Atropia” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and aimless comedies that aren’t nearly as funny as they think they are.
Tony Shawkat, Alia Shawkat, June Carryl and Zahra Alzubaidi in “Atropia” (Photo courtesy of Vertical)
“Atropia” should be called “Atrocious,” to serve as a warning about this awful and mishandled comedy. This long-winded movie takes place in a war simulation facility, where everyone is weird and neurotic, but not in a way that’s funny or clever. The movie’s concept had a lot of potential to be hilarious, but the terrible screenplay, messy direction and lackluster performances make “Atropia” an unappealing flop.
Written and directed by Hailey Benton Gates, “Atropia” had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize, which is considered the festival’s top award. All this proves is that when only a handful of people on a festival jury get to decide what is “the best,” there’s a good chance that the jury’s judgment is very off the mark and not reflective of what a larger group of industry people would have chosen. “Atropia” will definitely be known as one of the worst movies to win this Sundance prize. (For context, “Atropia” was also competing against far superior Sundance movies in 2025, such as “Twinless” and “Sorry, Baby.”)
“Atropia” takes place in 2006, in the desert city of Barstow, California, The movie was filmed on location in California. “Atropia” begins by showing what looks like a scene taking place in a residential area in Iraq. U.S. Army soldiers are patrolling everywhere outside. One of the soldiers aggressively asks one of the local residents, “Where’s the owner of this truck?”
Tensions flare on the streets between the soldiers and the local residents, some of who are insurgents. The tensions escalate into a shootout between the soldiers and the insurgents. A woman named Fayruz Abbas (played Alia Shawkat) has been observing this conflict and starts wailing on the street when she sees people injured or dying.
This chaos isn’t real, though. And this place isn’t really Iraq. It’s actually a war simulation facility called The Box, sprawled over 6,000 acres in the desert city of Barstow, California. At this facility is a recreation of what is supposed to resemble a country like Iraq. Instead, the fictional nation at this facility is called Atropia, and the people are pretending to live in an Atropian city called Medina Wasl. The behind-the-scenes infrastructure of Atropia is built like a combination of a military base and a movie set.
In the middle of the simulated shootout, someone shouts for the nearby cameras to stop because the fake improvised explosive device (IED) didn’t detonate when it was supposed to detonate. Fayruz expresses her annoyance because it means that she and the other role players have to go through this shootout again. Fayruz Abbas isn’t this actress’ real name, and she’s American, not from the Middle East. Fayuz Abbas is the name she was assigned to role play as this Middle-Eastern character, who apparently doesn’t do much in Medina Wasl but sort fruits and vegetables and watch other people fight.
“Atropia” does not reveal the real names of many of the characters. And you won’t learn much about Fayruz, even though she’s the story’s main protagonist. Fayruz mentions at one point in the story that she’s estranged from her family because her relatives do not approve of this “role playing” job that she has. What you will learn about Fayruz is that she likes to whine and complain a lot because she’s unhappy with her life and unhappy with herself.
How much of an annoying complainer is Fayruz? There’s a scene in the movie where Fayruz is washing some dishes. And then, she talks out loud to the dishes to complain that she’s jealous of the dishes because they get more water and more care than she gets.
“Atropia” has a rambling tone where several people in this large ensemble cast are shown saying a few things that are supposed to be funny but aren’t. And then, it’s on to the next scene where some more people spout some more nonsense. And so on. And so on. The movie doesn’t care to reveal anything substantial about anyone.
Fayruz has a female co-worker role playing as someone named Noor Fouad (played by Zahra Alzubaidi), who has been assigned to portray someone who sells DVDs on the streets of Medina Wasl. Fayruz and Noor are supposed to have a semi-friendly rapport, but their conversations are vacuous and superficial. Fayruz and Noor mostly talk about the fake personas that they and other co-workers have been assigned for their role playing. Abu Saif (played by Tony Shawkat, Alia Shawkat’s real-life father) is the role player depicting the egotistical mayor of Medina Wasl.
A few supervisors at The Box—such as an androgynous manager named Coco (played by June Carryl) and a tough-talking military guy listed in the end credits only as Mr. Speaker (played by Tim Blake Nelson)—show up from time to time to utter forgettable lines of dialogue. But there’s no real sense that anyone is really in charge at The Box, and this is just a place where people are stuck in the desert and doing a lot of time-wasting improvising for lives that they’re pretending to have. It all becomes so tedious to watch after a while.
Who actually pays to simulate being in a war zone in a desert? Apparently, a lot of wannabe U.S. Army soldiers who want to live out their video game fantasies. Two “recruitment specialists” named Hayden (played by Tim Heidecker) and Pina (played by Chloë Sevigny) are tasked with screening potential clients before they can be approved to participate in this war simulation facility. Heidecker and Sevigny share headline billing for “Atropia,” but their screen time is less than 10 minutes in the movie.
An early scene in “Atropia” shows Pina rejecting a female potential client, who actually used to be in the U.S. Army, but she was discharged after she lost her right leg in combat during the Iraq War. As soon as she tells Pina and Hayden this information, Pina says that this Army veteran can’t be a part of the simulation because she doesn’t want to trigger anyone’s PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) with reminders of being in a war zone.
“Atropia” has several characters with missing limbs, as a way of showing that The Box hires people with these disabilities to make the war zone look more “authentic.” Many of the applicants who want to role play as soldiers also have missing limbs. It’s intended to be satirical but it comes across as disrespectful to people who have these disabilities in real life, to make them the punchline for some not-funny-at-all jokes in a bad movie.
Another worker at The Box is a U.S. army official named Segall (played by Jamie McShane), who trains Army recruits with the ranking of private. Segall is a checklist of every movie stereotype of a military man who is supervising rookies: He shouts and barks commands as if he’s disciplining unruly brats. He struts around as if he owns the place. And he acts like being feared is the same thing as being respected.
The recruits under his command are all men in their 20s with names like Private Freeburn (played by Dash Melrose), Private Duque (played by Blessing Oluwole) and Private Gomez (played by Gilberto Ortiz), who has the nickname Private iPod because he plays a lot of music on his iPod. You won’t learn anything meaningful about these people either. Gomez and Freeburn like to sing pop/rock songs from the 1990s and 2000s, such as Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” or Phantom Planet’s “California,” as if they like doing karaoke in the middle of training sessions. Freeburn is a war movie cliché of a wide-eyed and naïve rookie who’s about to have his innocence shattered by the horrors of war.
Supporting characters come and go and have no real impact on the story. A role player named Nancy (played by Jane Levy) is assigned to depict a war journalist, but her only purpose to her employers is to put her in low-cut tops and tight clothing, just so the “recruits”can lust over her. A woman named Candy (played by Lola Kirke) doesn’t do anything in the movie but banter with Fayruz over meaningless things.
Channing Tatum shows up for about 10 minutes in “Atropia,” to portray an unnamed movie star who visits The Box to do research for a role he’s doing in an upcoming movie. It’s a celebrity cameo that fizzles out with limp attempts at comedy. Tatum is also featured in an end-credits scene that’s also underwhelming and not funny at all.
“Atropia” (which drags on for 103 minutes, which is too long for its slight plot) misses many opportunities to have smart satire of the anti-terrorist paranoia and American patriotism fervor that fueled the U.S.’s military action in the Middle East after the tragedy of 9/11. “Atropia” also could’ve had some interesting character studies about the types of people who pay to be in these war simulations. Another possibility would be for the movie to have an angle that explores the greed of people who profit from these war simulation facilities. You’ll find none of these creative ideas in “Atropia.”
Mostly, “Atropia” is about Fayruz being confused or miserable. Fayruz likes being an actress, but she’s emotionally conflicted about this dead-end simulation job because she’s been stuck playing someone who’s supposed to be just a bystander. Fayruz feels as if she’s underpaid, overworked and underappreciated. In hopes of getting a better acting job somewhere else, Fayruz films herself on the simulation set so she can put together a video reel of her recent work.
Unfortunately, a lot of “Atropia” is about Fayruz’s bizarre and very unsexy “romance” with an American co-worker, who has been assigned to role play as a Middle Eastern insurgent called Abu Dice (played by Callum Turner), but he’s very unconvincing. What Abu really wants to do is be a U.S. Army soldier. Fayruz and Abu are attracted to each other, but their “courtship” has stops and starts that’s a lot like drunk boxers circling each other in the ring before deciding who’s going to pounce first.
What this means is “Atropia” has several scenes where Fayruz and Abu can’t quite decide how far they want to sexually go with each other. The first time Abu tries to kiss Fayruz, she lets him kiss her for a few seconds, and then she pushes him away. They have awkward conversations where they play mind games about how much they might or might not be attracted to each other. And then they might grope and kiss a little more until things progress into where you think it will go, but none of it looks believable because Alia Shawkat and Turner have no chemistry together.
Fayruz is a chronically insecure complainer. Abu is just a dimwitted creep. During one of their many off-putting conversations, Abu tells Fayruz that when he was serving in the military, he spent his masturbation time in portable toilets, so now he can only get an erection when he smells a lot of defecation. Ironically, it’s another way to describe why anyone might like this dull and repugnant movie, which is full of crap.
Vertical released “Atropia” in New York City on December 12, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cities on January 23, 2026. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on February 27, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in the fictional Chinese cities of Hoping and Kingstown, the action comedy film “Buster Water Pipes” features a predominantly Asian cast of characters (with a few white people and one black person) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: The Hoping Police Department is in danger of shutting down because the city has no serious crimes, so the police fabricate crimes to keep their jobs, when they come across a group of real thieves posing as plumbers for the police station’s busted water pipes.
Culture Audience: “Busted Water Pipes” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and silly action comedies about cops and robbers.
Yan Peilun and Zhou You in “Busted Water Pipes” (Photo courtesy of China Lion Distribution)
“Busted Water Pipes” tries very hard to be a hilarious action comedy about cops and robbers, but the results are more maddening than madcap. This overstuffed movie is more convoluted than it needs to be and has a lot of bad acting. “Busted Water Pipes” starts off with one idea and then goes quickly downhill when it veers off into another direction.
Directed by Zhou Difei, “Busted Water Pipes” was written by Zhou, Chong Zheng and Jiao Yufeng. The movie takes place in the fictional Chinese cities of Hoping and Kingstown. The movie was filmed in China. “Busted Water Pipes” is told in four chapters, with each chapter being more ridiculous as the story goes off the rails.
“Busted Water Pipes” begins by showing a SWAT police team responding to a hostage situation in Kingstown, which is a large city. A former SWAT captain, who had been an employee of the Kingstown Police Department for 10 years, has taken people hostage inside a building because he is angry about being fired. The hostage crisis is big news and is being televised live.
Unfortunately, the SWAT team was given the wrong building address for where the kidnapper and hostages are. The kidnapper sees the SWAT team break into the building across from where the kidnapper and hostages are. And the kidnapper decides to blow himself up, causing the entire building (where he and the hostages are) to explode, with the hostages and kidnapper dying in the explosion.
This fiasco makes international news. The Kingstown Police Department becomes a laughingstock. The leader of the SWAT team is an ambitious maverick named Yu Dahai (played by Eddie Peng), who had been considered a rising star in law enforcement. Dahai’s boss Chagnon (played by Prem Yadav) was the one who gave Dahai the wrong building address. However, Chagnon convinces Dahai to take the blame, with Chagnon promising that he will help Dahai in the future after the scandal dies down.
Dahai (who is a bachelor) is forced to resign from the Kingstown Police Department and is transferred to the small town of Hoping, which is a rural area. Hoping has a small police department with limited resources in a shabby building. The Hoping Police Department doesn’t get a lot of major crimes. A typical call to the Hoping police is to settle a fight among schoolchildren or to find a lost steer.
Needless to say, Dahai is extremely bored and thinks this job is beneath his level of skills and experience. Chagnon promised Dahai that would be in Hoping for one year, and then Chagnon would get Dahai transferred back to Kingstown. But that turns out to be an empty promise.
Seven years pass, Dahai is a police sergeant, but he is still stuck in Hoping. Chagnon then becomes a senator. Dahai foolishly thinks that Chagnon will help Dahai get transferred back to Kingstown. When Dahai calls Chagnon’s office to ask him about this promise, Chagnon orders his secretary Xia Yi (played by Jing Ci) to tell Dahai not to contact Chagnon again.
To make matters worse for Dahai, his boss gets promoted to the job that Dahai wanted in Kingstown. Hoping Police Department chief Lao Ge, also known as Old G (played by Yang Haoyu), who spends a lot of time sleeping on the job, gleefully transfers to Kingstown. Before he leaves, he tells Dahai that Dahai has a very good chance of being promoted to police chief of Hoping.
The remaining employees of the Hoping Police Department are Dahai and two goofy sidekicks: Li Baibai (played by Bu Yu) and Xiao Ma, also known as Little Ma (played by Jiang Xueming). They also get help from a guy named Monk (played by Fu Hang), a character that didn’t really need to be in the movie. Lao Ge fails in Kingstown, so he is sent back to Hoping.
These hapless employees find out that they soon could be out of a job. Chagnon has ordered that the Hoping Police Department get shut down because there are no major crimes in Hoping. And so, in a desperate attempt to keep their jobs, the Hoping Police Department cops decide to fabricate and stage crimes.
Meanwhile, the Luo crime family is looking for its next big scheme. Gang boss Luo Yin (played by Zhang Qi) wants to pass on the family’s crime business to his nephew Luo Siji (Allen Ai, also known as Allen), who is reluctant because Siji wants to keep his law-abiding job in another type of work. Yin doesn’t trust his hotheaded, vicious, and impulsive son Luo Hao (played by Zhou You) to take over the business. Other people in the gang are Luo Ma (played by Yang Zhen) and Niu Dalun (played by Yan Peilun).
“Busted Water Pipes” throws in a ridiculous story about an ancient pirate leader named Great Lady Chen, also known as Chen Yisao (played by Liu Yi Chun), whose pirate ship crashed and supposedly contains lost treasures. The Luo crime gang thinks the lost ship is underneath the Hoping police station. And so, the gang members pretend to be plumbers tasked with fixing busted water pipes in the police station. And there are at least two times in the movie where someone is wearing a bomb that looks like a neck collar and is threatened with death.
The rest of the movie wallows in a lot of fights and incoherence for this nonsensical scheme. And out of nowhere, there’s a subplot about Dahai being unexpectedly reunited with a 7-year-old girl who was a baby he saved from a building during the explosion that happened during the hostage crisis in Kingstown. In addition to dealing with this gang of robbers, Dahai has to protect this girl (who calls him “Daddy”) because she keeps tagging along while he tries to do his job. It’s all just a contrivance for this messy and mindless film that will only appeal to viewers who just want to see loud action scenes and don’t care if the story is garbage.
China Lion Distribution released “Busted Water Pipes” in select U.S. cinemas on January 30, 2026. The movie was released in China on January 23, 2026.
Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed city in England, the comedy/drama film “Pillion” (based on the 1975 novel “Box Hill”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.
Culture Clash: A socially awkward loner gets involved in a volatile BDSM relationship as a submissive partner to the dominant and mysterious leader of a motorcycle group.
Culture Audience: “Pillion” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and are interested in watching well-acted and skillfully written movies about BDSM relationships from the perspectives of gay men.
Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgård in “Pillion” (Photo by Chris Harris/A24)
The well-acted comedy/drama “Pillion” is more than a movie about a submissive man involved with a mysterious dominant lover in a BDSM relationship. It’s a bittersweet story about emotional vulnerabilities when giving and receiving love. The movie treats the non-traditional aspects of this relationship without judgment and with adult maturity. (A pillion is the passenger seat for a motorcycle.)
Written and directed by Harry Lighton, “Pillion” is Lighton’s feature-film directorial debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival and subsequently screened at several other film festivals in 2025, including the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival and the BFI London Film Festival. “Pillion” is based on Adam Mars-Jones’ 1975 novel “Box Hill,” with intriguing changes in the movie.
Both the movie and the book take place in a suburban England (the movie does not name the city), but “Box Hill” takes place in the 1970s over a period of several years, whereas “Pillion” takes place in the mid-2020s over a period of several months. Another big change from the book to the movie: A major character dies in the book, but this person does not die in the movie.
Lighton gives a superb cinematic adaptation of the book by adding unique elements that are realistic, with the right balance of heartbreaking and heartwarming. A movie with this type of sexual content could easily be exploitative, but Lighton gives “Pillion” a matter-of-fact and non-judgmental tone when showing a gay BDSM lifestyle, which is rarely the focus of mainstream movies. “Pillion” has an attitude of: “This is how some people live. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to watch it.”
“Pillion” is told from the perspective of protagonist Colin Smith (played by Harry Melling), a socially awkward gay man in his mid-30s. Colin is openly gay, and he is very inexperienced when it comes to dating. Colin, who works as parking meter enforcer, lives with his parents Pete (played by Douglas Hodge) and Peggy (played by Lesley Sharp), who are completely accepting of Colin being gay. Peggy is so accepting, she tries to set up Colin on blind dates.
In the beginning of the movie, it’s the Christmas holiday season, and Colin is doing something that he loves to do: He sings in a barbershop quartet, which is performing in a cafe pub at the moment. During this performance, Colin notices a tall and handsome stranger dressed in motorcycle biker gear. This stranger, who is about 10 to 15 years older than Colin, is sitting by himself.
Colin is immediately attracted to him. After the performance, Colin extends his hands to greet the customers, but the stranger makes a point of ignoring Colin. The stranger doesn’t seem interested in talking to anyone. Colin is still intrigued, but he’s too shy to start a conversation with him. The stranger seems to be aware that Colin is staring at him.
Colin sees the stranger again by chance one night, when Colin is walking his family’s Dachshund near a business district street. The stranger is walking a Rottweiler. Colin will eventually find out that the stranger’s name is Ray (played by Alexander Skarsgård), who is also gay or queer. Ray is not from the U.K., and he has a hard-to-place accent that could be American, Canadian, or the accent of a Western European who speaks English very well.
Colin tries to nonchalantly follow Ray, but Ray notices that Colin is following him. The power dynamics in their relationship begin immediately. Ray orders Colin to follow him into a dark alley. Colin willingly obliges. Ray takes off his shirt and reveals that he’s wearing bondage gear. Ray asks Colin, “What am I going to do with you?” Colin replies, “Whatever you want, really.”
Ray then zips down his pants and demands that Colin give him oral sex. Colin willingly obliges, but he almost chokes during the act and makes profuse apologies. It’s the beginning of their BDSM (bondage, discipline, sadism and masochism) relationship. It’s also the first time that Colin has ever had this type of relationship. It isn’t long before Colin moves into Ray’s home, a non-descript, middle-class house that is less than a half-hour drive from where Colin’s parents live.
“Pillion” has some comedic moments about Colin’s awkwardness in navigating this relationship, but the movie doesn’t do it in a mean-spirited way. Colin and Ray have an “opposites attract” relationship that, on the surface, works well for the BDSM dynamic. Colin enjoys being a complete submissive at all times to Ray, who enjoys his role as the dominant partner.
From the start of the relationship, Ray sets boundaries that would be deal breakers for most people, but not for Colin: Ray refuses to show signs of affection to Colin, such as kissing, hugging, cuddling or holding hands. Ray also won’t tell Colin what Ray does for money. Ray never mentions having a job, and it’s unknown what Ray’s source of income is.
In the beginning of their relationship, Ray also won’t share a bed with Colin when they sleep. Ray expects Colin to sleep on the floor, sometimes on the couch, or on a bed in another room. And it’s not unusual for Ray to treat Colin like the family dog.
Ray says that Colin should not expect Ray to be monogamous. Colin also cannot be possessive or curious about what Ray does when Ray spends time apart from Colin. Colin cannot snoop into other areas of Ray’s life, such as who his family members are and what Ray’s personal background is. Needless to say, Ray also doesn’t want Colin to describe Ray as a “boyfriend” or to say the word “love” about their relationship.
Ray is the leader of a BDSM gay biker group of motorcylists. He’s considered an “alpha male leather daddy,” not just with this group but also with other gay biker groups who know about Ray. (Jake Shears, also known as the lead singer of Scissor Sisters, has a cameo role as a submissive biker named Kevin.)
Colin feels insecure because he knows that Ray is considered much better-looking and more of a “catch” than Colin. And so, Colin does whatever it takes to please Ray. In order to fit in better with this biker group of dominants and submissives, Colin ends up shaving off all of his hair and wearing a padlock on a chain necklace, which is what most of the group’s other submissives have done too.
Ray tests the levels of humiliation that Colin might tolerate to see how “loyal” Colin is to Ray. Colin seems to be okay with acts of degradation that are done to Colin in private and are part of their sex play. But there comes a time when Ray does something in public to humiliate Colin. And it’s a turning point in their relationship.
After a while, Colin wants more than Ray might be willing to give. Colin, who has fallen in love with Ray, wants some indication that Ray loves Colin. If Ray wants to push the boundaries of humiliating Colin, then Colin wants something in return by pushing the boundaries of what makes Ray uncomfortable: showing emotional vulnerability, especially when it comes to love and romance.
From the outside looking in, the complicated issues of power, control and sex in a BDSM relationship might be too confusing to those not in the relationship. Colin’s parents, especially his mother Peggy, see obvious indications that Ray is bossy and rude to Colin. And she doesn’t like it one bit, because she thinks it’s non-consensual and abusive.
A darkly comedic scene in the movie takes place when Ray has dinner with Colin and Colin’s parents for the first time at the Smith family home because Peggy insisted on it. It’s a battle of two strong personalities (Ray and Peggy) that not only has a lot to do with Peggy being protective of her “mama’s boy” son Colin but also about Peggy’s fear of losing Colin to a partner whom she sees as possibly abusive. Ray is very uncomfortable with being part of family dinners, so it’s a major compromise in his relationship with Colin that he agreed to be at this dinner.
Melling gives a terrifically nuanced performance as Colin, who is caught up in the thrills and the agony of Colin’s relationship with Ray. Skarsgård gives a more difficult performance as the inscrutable and often-unlikable Ray, who tries not to let his true feelings show, but those true feelings occasionally reveal themselves in subtle ways in body language and tone of voice. Sharp is absolutely wonderful in her role as outspoken Peggy, who has her own personal issues to deal with because Peggy is in recovery from cancer.
“Pillion” will undoubtedly make most viewers root for Colin to have his love reciprocated by Ray. However, the movie has a lot to say about relationship expectations: Can you love someone for who that person is, or is the love about who you want that person to be? During his relationship with Ray, Colin discovers that he wants to be a submissive in a BDSM relationship. The movie ultimately shows Colin finding out that being in this type of relationship doesn’t mean that Colin has to lose himself and suppress what he wants that will make himself happy.
A24 will release “Pillion” in select U.S. cinemas on February 6, 2026. The movie was released in U.K. cinemas on November 28, 2025.
