Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | June 26, 2026
Disney+
Avatar: Fire and Ash - Blood and Ash is not necessarily a bad film, but it’s too much. Too much exposition, too much silly, weirdly appropriative gobbledygook, too much Fast and the Furious-esque run-on dialogue about family. What makes all this cinematic excess so frustrating is how simple the story is. There is probably a rock-solid 105-minute film to be found here, but Cameron is, as usual, unable to get out of the way of his own ego, overstuffing the film with everything he can, simply because he can. — TK Burton
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die — Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a zany ride, with unexpected action setpieces and a cheeky sense of humor. It’s a good time all around, and worth the price of admission for Hobo Rockwell and Manic Pixie Haley Lu alone! Even at its messiest, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die takes those stories you already know and builds something new from them. And the proof is that pit you feel in your stomach, as you realize you really should put your phone down. — Tori Preston
Hulu
Send Help — In different hands, Send Help would pass its time as a psychological thriller, but Raimi’s uniquely comic horror sensibilities make it so much more. Every action set piece is a chance for bigger splatters and more fluids, and McAdams plays it all with infectious zeal. I laughed harder during this movie than I have in a long time, and I left the theater heartened. We deserve to see Raimi doing his pure, uncut gross-out schtick in between his studio franchise forays, and we deserve to see McAdams sink her teeth into roles that allow her to do and be everything - the hero, the villain, and sure, maybe even a love interest too. — Tori Preston
HBO Max
They Will Kill You — We don’t rate movies based on a star system here at Ye Olde Pajiba, but if we did, then I’d give They Will Kill You at least five stars - one for every blood geyser that erupts during the breezy 94-minute runtime. I mean, there were probably more than five gore eruptions, to be honest, but you get the picture. The point is, this movie is probably not for everyone, but if you (like me) enjoy some fast and silly slop in your hybrid action/comedy/horror, then They Will Kill You has you covered. In blood. Let Tom Felton get beheaded more often. Patricia Arquette doing the bare minimum still works, somehow. Zazie Beetz is a perfect horror/action hero in the making, and that’s not just because “Zazie Beetz Some Ass” is such a gimme. They Will Kill You may not be remembered next year or even next week, but if you’re a bit of a sicko, it’s a great way to spend an hour and a half.
How to Make a Killing — How to Make a Killing could have been a great movie. It’s weird to say this, but it’s middling in spite of an otherwise brilliant plot about a man who is literally imprisoned by his own greed. The movie may as well have been called Careful What You Wish For, and Glen Powell’s character could have been positioned as a memorable anti-hero. How to Make a Killing could have been a great movie. It’s weird to say this, but it’s middling in spite of an otherwise brilliant plot about a man who is literally imprisoned by his own greed. The movie may as well have been called Careful What You Wish For, and Glen Powell’s character could have been positioned as a memorable anti-hero. It’s a shame, too, because the Coen Brothers, or even someone like Joe Carnahan or Guy Ritchie, could have had a blast with this script. But the whole thing just kind of dies on the vine, suffocated by its own pretension and the weight of a limp Glen Powell performance. — DR
MGM+
Project Hail Mary — I don’t know what else one can ask for from a big-budget movie than what Christopher Miller and Phil Lord deliver in Project Hail Mary, working from a terrific script from Drew Goddard based on Andy Weir’s novel. It may not be perfect, and it may be 20 minutes too long (although I easily could’ve watched another hour), but it does what the best space exploration movies do: make you feel small in the scheme of the universe while somehow embigening our sense of what we might contribute to it. It is life-affirming. It is funny. It is emotional. It is thrilling and intense and, above all, genuinely entertaining. It may be the best sci-fi film since Arrival, and easily one of the strongest arguments in recent memory that not every movie need be a sequel, reboot, or spin-off. — DR
Amazon
Sheep Detectives — Of all the baffling decisions in this mostly charming romp, none surprised me more than seeing Craig Mazin’s (Chernobyl, The Last of Us) name in the credits. But it kind of makes sense, right? The hard-to-pin tone, not quite for kids but not quite for adults, reads as the push and pull between Balda and Mazin’s creative strengths, but the fact that the central mystery isn’t quite as smart as it thinks it is - that’s all Mazin (if you watched his talking head segments during The Last of Us making-of featurettes, you know). Still, I’m rooting for this thing. It’s harmless, it’s fun, and it’s the closest we’re gonna get to peak Cornetto Trilogy now that Edgar Wright is off making the big bucks. The Sheep Detectives isn’t as sharp at wielding its genre conventions in the service of comedy or, in this case, children’s entertainment as something like Hot Fuzz was, but it’s close. Good enough to make for Baby’s First Whodunit, at the very least. — Tori Preston
