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Coyote Vs. Acme (2026)
It’s the movie Warner Bros never wanted you to see. Intended to be scrapped for a $30 million tax write-off, the little family film about the little guy taking on the power and corruption of big conglomerates seemed destined to be yet another victim of ledger-shifting for CEO portfolio bonuses. Fortunately, an indie distributor came in and bought the movie and now, three years later, audiences can see Coyote vs. Acme and judge for themselves. And it’s actually pretty great. Reminiscent of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the movie has a meta-satirical take on legal thrillers, but it’s also so unfailingly pleasant, inventive, and silly. Will Forte is the real star as the self-doubting lawyer tasked by famous Looney Tune Wile E. Coyote to sue the Acme company for years of faulty products. Forte plays the straight man to the chaos around him and provides a well-needed baseline that allows the audience to take in the zany jokes and wonderfully daffy visual gags. The melding of animation and live-action is lively and the physicality of it all provides an ongoing sense of wonder. John Cena is also wonderfully pompous, exactly how I like him, as Acme’s lead attorney. I was smiling and chuckling throughout, but what genuinely surprised me is that I felt a lump in my throat at the very end with what my pal Eric Muller deemed the most emotional “beep-beep” in cinematic history. It’s a satisfying movie that can appeal to all ages, even if you don’t recognize the classic Looney Tunes or a cartoon Peter Lorre. Even more, the fact that this good movie is widely available to be enjoyed is itself an act of defiance against corporate greed. Coyote vs. Acme is worth the wait and a reward for families.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Buddy (2026)
What if Barney the friendly dinosaur was really a murderous monster? That’s the catchy premise of co-writer/director Casper Kelly’s surreal horror fantasy Buddy, a crazy yet admirably committed exploration of kids TV tropes to their fullest extent. Considering Kelly might be best known for his insane yet brilliant deconstruction of sitcom opening theme songs, the Adult Swim short film Too Many Cooks, this makes sense. My first question was whether the pastel-colored, stagey world of Buddy the Unicorn (voiced by Keegan Michael-Key) was supposed to be literally real or was simply a TV set. The universe of Buddy, while adhering to the tropes and mechanics of children’s TV storytelling, is indeed its own reality. I enjoyed how Buddy knows he must gather the children to sing the closing theme song because then “the words appear” (he means end credits) and everything resets, which would allow him to heal from his injuries or perhaps have the children forget witnessing his horrors. The puppet-heavy world of Buddy is interesting, as are the subversive and disturbing edges glimpsed like Buddy trying to explain the disappearance of a child and the strange “red paint” on his outfit. Short of twenty minutes, the entire movie takes place in this strange fantasy setting, so I kept wondering about the lore and workings of this universe, especially how Buddy is capturing kids from the real world. The last ten minutes fulfilled that but I wanted more. That’s because the Buddy set itself, modeled after PeeWee’s Playhouse and Barney, feels a little too closed-off, the building threat of Buddy being rather redundant. I became frustrated at how limited the movie was settling with its subversive satire, at several points feeling like an overextended skit going off the rails rather than a complete movie. Then again that structural gambit might appeal to other viewers who are on the same twisted wavelength of Kelly. It held my interest, but I kept wondering if this was all there was, and whether maybe Buddy was a little too much of the same.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Masters of the Universe (2026)
Masters of the Universe is an intriguing conundrum. It was a box-office failure upon release, as it seems few people wanted to venture out for a reboot of a 1980s Saturday morning cartoon that was created to primarily sell toys for Mattel. It was an expensive flop, and then upon its arrival to Amazon Prime and wide availability, the movie has since become one of the most streamed movies in Amazon history. I think I can explain this. The fan base for this franchise is dwindling with aging Millennials and few felt a big-budget remake was a necessary theater appointment, but in the privacy of your own home, and thinking back on the bad headlines and buzz, you might find yourself just like me, remarking, “I am actually digging this. Why were people so harsh?” It’s a candy-colored meta-fantasy adventure that rips Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) into the real world for some fish-out-of-water comedy, then reunites him back as an adult into his home world, Eternia, under the sway of the dark lord, Skeletor (Jared Leto). The tone is clearly inspired by Taika Watiti’s Thor: Ragnarok, keeping things breezy while side-stepping the more ridiculous elements with an eyebrow-raise. I actually enjoyed the explanation that the very simplistic names for the characters, such as Fisto and Ram-Man, were because Adam was a kid when he was deported and that’s what a kid would recall. The joke does run up to the line of excess, and it’s not alone, but I think overall the tone is so unabashedly fun that I could forgive missteps or annoyances. Under direction by Travis Knight, a man from the world of stop-motion animation, the big screen visuals are crisp, dynamic, and consistently making excellent use of the space of the frame, something I find that directors with animation experience really utilize better. There are nice character moments I appreciated (“Your dad’s gonna turn around any second and see… any second now…”), entertaining fights and locations, and maybe my favorite Leto performance in… years? He’s actually quite enjoyable as the contemptuous baddie. I never cared in the slightest for He-Man and the cartoon growing up, so I have no built-in nostalgia for this franchise, but even I found myself enjoying the characters, their comradery, and the confrontations. It’s hard not to be cheesy or goofy given the subject matter, but I think Masters of the Universe threads the needle as well as could be between reverence and irreverence. It may not be masterful but it’s plenty entertaining and fun and, certainly with lowered expectations, a perfectly fine way to unwind over two hours at home.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Toy Story 5 (2026)
Every time Pixar resuscitates the storied Toy Story franchise, going on three decades now, I get a little wary of them upending the good will. The series had a perfect ending in the third edition in 2010, but being Pixar’s golden and most bankable franchise, it wasn’t allowed to remain an ending. I quite enjoyed the fourth edition in 2019 and consider it a fitting and poignant sendoff for Woody, if, of course, they could accept this as his settled ending. Now in 2026, here comes a fifth Toy Story, and my emotions are decidedly mixed, excited for the creative possibilities of another entry in Pixar’s flagship series and girding myself in anticipation of whether or not these fitting and earned endings are disturbed. Perhaps I’ve been overly protective of these endings, or perhaps it’s just a reflection of our modern IP-revivial cycles that studios cannot accept anything that makes money having finite story endings. Well, while I believe Toy Story 5 to be likely the weakest of the five films, it’s still a marvelous movie that elicited tears from my grown-up eyes on more than one occasion.
Now that Woody (voiced by Tom Hanks) has settled into a new life, the plucky leader of Bonnie’s toys has become the next cowgirl in line, Jessie (voiced by Joan Cusack). Life is good until Bonnie’s parents introduce an educational tablet device, Lilypad or “Lily” (voiced by Greta Lee). They want Bonnie to socialize more and make friends with the neighbors, something she’s having difficulty achieving. Bonnie becomes enthralled with her first smart screen, spending hours upon hours with it inches away from her unblinking face. Jessie sees the new tech as an enemy to traditional play time, as Bonnie’s toys have been chiefly neglected as she devotes all of her attention to this new shiny device. She plots to remove the Lilypad; however, Lily has her own ideas about what Bonnie needs, and it involves getting rid of the outdated toys of childhood so she can be better accepted by her more tech-adopting peers.
Right away, Toy Story 5 provides a meaningful reason for its own existence, examining the immersion of technology and in particular screen time into the development and maturation of children. It’s a substantial issue today for millions of parents, and a genuine worry about whether or not these magical electronic devices are helping or hindering childhood development. Are we building synapses with these games and social media apps or are we building a dependency and despondency when un-synched? It’s an age-old question over whether technology is facilitating growth or substituting for it, an especially pertinent question in the realm of education that ruling parties go back and forth with. This is a fabulous and thorny issue to explore in the Toy Story universe, and with co-writer/co-director Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Finding Nemo) at the helm, there’s an assurance that all will be handled with wit and warmth (Stanton has co-written all five Toy Story movies, though this is his first directing credit). I actually think this movie utilizes its central premise better than Toy Story 4 did with the murky existential questions with Forky over what constituted play and thus was granted existence and consideration. Now, that movie transformed into a different and more emotionally resonant theme about broken toys still having purpose and dignity after being cast off from their owners, a disability empowerment message that was beautifully handled, so much so that I forgave the dropped exploration of thorny prior themes. With Toy Story 5, the question over the role of tech is front and center throughout.
At the core of this movie is the question of growing up and the malignancy of time. Lily wants Bonnie to be accepted and thus happy, and her reasoning is that these other toys are a detriment to this goal. In her view, they are dragging Bonnie down and imprisoning her in a juvenile state that her peers have already graduated from. For Lily, growing up is a process to be hurried, to become more like a “grown kid,” and thus more like everyone else on the block who has adopted tech and screens earlier in their lives. For Lily, Bonnie, even only at a mere eight years old, is already behind in her maturation process and she’s desperate to get her caught up. For Jessie, it’s about holding onto the status quo as long as possible. For three sequels now the movies have explored the nature of change, acceptance, and identity, and it’s still a wellspring of insight and emotional and intellectual relevance. Having Jessie be the primary protagonist of this sequel was a brilliant choice because she’s the toy who has been defined by abandonment issues. She’s been left behind by two other kids, first Emily and then Andy, and she’s afraid history is repeating with Bonnie’s dwindling attention now that tech has entered the home. There’s a clear parallel with the original Toy Story when Woody became jealous and insecure about the shiny new toy of Andy’s fascination, Buzz Lightyear (voiced by Tim Allen). Oh, and thanks to 2022’s Lightyear, we now know all these toys were the discount knockoffs of Chris Evans’ voice and that this original movie that Andy declared his favorite was not quite worthy of his adoration. Anchoring the major theme onto Jessie’s existing emotional attachment issues is smart, and it allows the fifth film to serve as a means of long-delayed closure for the cowgirl much as Toy Story 4 was a means of closure for Woody. It’s about confirmation that these relationships they build with their kids are not one-way, and that even after they end, and everything has an ending whether we like it or not, we know that they have mattered. No one, not even toys, wants to feel disposable.
I especially loved the imaginary play sequences in the film, highlighted by a different animation style. It’s painterly and with pastel colors, and it’s a great artistic choice to visually code the imaginary sequences from the standard reality. I loved how chaotic and silly these sequences were, converging escalating threats, dramatic twists, and ridiculous double crosses and resolutions, perfectly embodying the wild mind of a child in the midst of imaginary play. These little interludes were welcomed at every turn.
I did say Toy Story 5 was the weakest entry in the franchise, again no shame being a bronze medalist at the Olympics, so to speak, as you’ve gotten ahead of so many others to attain this honor. I enjoyed the lowered stakes of simply trying to tell a story about two factions fighting over what they felt was best for the mental well-being of a child. There’s something inherently sweet about a movie whose big goal is to just help a shy little girl make some friends. I do wish there was more persistent commentary on what screen-addiction has done to a generation of kids at an important time besides turn the neighborhood girls catty and mean. Bonnie, you are not the “weird kid” just because you prefer playing outdoors. At no point is Jessie really threatened with annihilation, and even as she’s lost she still finds a new and nurturing owner that could possibly even replace Bonnie. Because of those lowered stakes, the script can feel a little like an expanded TV episode where a character learns a valuable lesson. The supporting characters are sidelined with few exceptions. This is the second movie in a row that merely gives Buzz a jokey storyline, this time working up the courage to ask Jessie to be his wife. It’s more a recurring joke at his fumbling awkwardness. It feels like Pixar knew it was giving the character such a short shrift, which is why they also included an ongoing subplot of a group of Buzz Lightyear action figures bandying together to go searching for “star command.” Until finally tied into the action at the very climax, they’re a diversion that is never really as funny as it could have been. I will also firmly proclaim my stance that Woody should not have returned for this sequel. He offers little to the story, beyond to once again reflect upon how old he has gotten, which itself is just turned into a repeating joke. Woody’s involvement is wasted and his perspective isn’t different enough that some other toy, perhaps Buzz, could have fulfilled his role and left the former sheriff in retirement with Bo Peep.
Does Toy Story 5 upend the cherished endings of its predecessors? No, not really. Those endings still have meaning because the audience has invested relationships with these characters over thirty years. The latter sequels, in my mind, have served as closure vehicles for individual characters, and I think that’s a smart way to handle the franchise. Of course, I also think just telling original stories with new characters in this universe would be even more appealing, but the likelihood of that seems slim when Disney wants to sell another billion dollars in merch with their established and beloved characters. It’s probably naive to think this movie will ultimately be the franchise’s last, so instead I’ll just hold out hope that its ongoing quality will persist, and as long as Stanton and other Pixar brain-trust remember its innate and lasting appeal, I have a buoyant sense of hope that newer editions can still capture that initial magic that began in 1995.
At the conclusion of Toy Story 3, which I still gauge as the best in the series, it made me reflective and want to break out my old neglected toys, giving them one more hurrah of play. At the conclusion of Toy Story 5, it made me reflective, but I didn’t want to reach for any old toys and give them an extra dose of affection; it made me want to grab my toddler and soak up the time I have available with him, now, in this moment, while there’s a childhood to relish before it too vanishes at the mercy of time. This movie is all about the struggle over childhood, one side hoping to elongate it and the other hoping to rush through. From a different perspective, like a parent, it’s inevitably a losing battle, but it makes me reflect more on cherishing those moments while they are available. That’s pretty deep for a movie with a talking electronic poop assistant voiced by Conan O’Brien. Not too shabby, Pixar. Here’s your billion dollars.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Moana (2026)
If you’re a fan of the 2016 animated film Moana, then watch that again. If you’ve never watched the animated movie, then watch that instead. The live-action Moana is everything I have feared and dreaded when it comes to the assembly line of Disney live-action remakes. It is a carbon copy of the original, beat for beat the same story, the same jokes, the same visual shots, even the same character designs of the non-human characters. It’s all just worse. The lush colors and lively energy of the animated movie have been replaced by drab “realistic” colors, transparent green screens, and a performance from Dwayne Johnson absent the chaotic energy of his cartoon portrayal. The CGI animals, especially the chicken, looked terrifying. The songs are still great, the performance from our new Moana, Catherine Laga’ala, is pretty decent, though throughout the entire movie, even when it hit some strides of, “Well, this isn’t too bad,” it made me feel like I was watching a competent cover band play the hits of a much better and more famous band. It’s like the Moana Road Tour versus the real deal, and for many that could be plenty to provide sufficient entertainment, especially if you have a little one who has never seen any form of Moana. Then again, why start with the live-action one? Beyond being completely superfluous as the original is not even a full ten years old upon release, it’s just not as good in every measure. There’s not a single improvement, only artistic downgrades, and at such how far it goes creatively is actually very minute.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Dust Bunny (2025)
Bryan Fuller is one of those names in television that is spoken of like an institution, at least for geeks. The man is responsible for short-lived but beloved TV series like Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and launching the new Star Trek Discovery universe as well as cracking the “un-adaptable” Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods, at least for its brilliant first season before he and co-creator Michael Green were jettisoned for cheaper alternatives. That’s the other thing about Bryan Fuller, he tends to wear out his welcome fast for such an eponymous show-starter. Whether it’s work habits or ego, or just butting heads with foolhardy execs, Fuller tends to get pushed out on his projects. That’s why a movie written and directed by Fuller has immediate and immense appeal. Here’s a singular vision from one of TV’s most unique creators, and he doesn’t have to fret about having to craft a season of storytelling. He just has to concern himself with 100 minutes of hopeful entertainment. Dust Bunny has a crackerjack premise, a great leading man, and some stylish flourishes and fun, and yet I walked away, after eight years removed from seeing a Fuller project, not feeling particularly swept away.
A ittle girl, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), hires a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster hiding under her bed. Boom. Sold. Naturally, the jaded hitman who’s seen it all doesn’t believe the little girl. Now not only will he have to defend the little girl from a potential monster, he’ll have to fend off other hired guns and assassins trying to take out this kid because she “knows too much.”
Given that hook, I thought that Dust Bunny was going to be a monster movie by way of a hitman movie, but really it’s much more of a glib and exhausting hitman movie with the idea of a monster until the final fifteen minutes of chaotic culmination. I thought there was going to be a much more compelling and charming relationship between the two characters, possibly forming a surrogate father/daughter relationship as they descend into a realm of danger even an experienced man of action is ill-equipped for. I thought Dust Bunny was going to be more of a Guilermo del Toro-style fantasia and instead it’s far more akin to those Tarantino ripoffs with a stilted attitude in place of stakes and originality. This is much more akin to flimsy style-over-substance dross like Gunpowder Milkshake or Polar (also starring Mikkelsen) than del Toro. This is far more of a hitman movie that occasionally remembers, oh yeah, there’s this whole fantasy/horror element that could make it stand out. There’s so much about our lead hitman having to worry about this little girl because she saw his face and can identify him. There are teams of other hitmen that want to bump her off, sent by his own handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver). As a hitman movie, it’s pretty dull because our hero is overpowered and under matched. At no point will you worry for his own sake, and plus, just sending disposable humans into the same apartment night after night is boring. I’ve seen those kinds of movies before, even the ones that are just self-infatuated style orgies of violence. What makes this movie unique is the freaking monster, and it doesn’t really take hold until the very end of the movie, not coincidentally the best part. At that point, Dust Bunny becomes a whimsical variation on Tremors, where the unwitting participants cannot touch the floor, lest they be eaten by a monster under the floorboards. It’s a lot harder to have your shootouts and fights while balancing on scarce end tables (what if the fantasy monster could really transform the floor into lava? Oh, the nasty possibilities).
If Dust Bunny was just an exercise in vacuous style, I might find some fleeting pleasures from it, but the whimsical tone takes the premise of an unorthodox fable and mutates it under insufferable irony. It’s the kind of movie that knows you’ve seen glib hitman movies before, and it’s playing into those expectations with an attempted ironic distance but instead it just comes across as annoyingly circuitous conversations. The pained banter became baffling as characters attempted to take what the previous character said and nothing while just pushing the conversation forward a millimeter. These are not funny exchanges. These are not examples of cutesy dialogue. It’s just maddening nonsense that runs in circles, and I found myself mentally tuning out whenever it kept repeating. For me, the dialogue was too irreverent for its own good.
There’s a really engaging and imaginative movie on the outskirts trying to push on through. Having a little girl with a monster following her begs for further world-building and examination, let alone integrating the monster’s unique abilities and dangers. As it stands, all one has to do is stay off the floor during nightfall (a reintroduction of bedpans is an unfortunate must). Early on, it feels like the little girl is in real danger, as the monster literally lifts her bed off the floor and seems to try and shake her loose. Although throughout the daytime she still canoes around her lonely apartment on a giant hippo on wheels. I guess it’s a precaution or maybe she just wants to get better at apartment canoeing before nighttime when she really needs to make sure she can paddle. This is the last time you’ll feel she’s in actual danger. I wanted far less of the overtly stylish hitman antics and more of the perspective of a hitman thrust into a fantasy. Dust Bunny is a disappointing inverse, turned inside out, with a hitman movie with a different Big Bad. I’m not saying Fuller had to rely on staid fantasy storylines, like the girl is really some long-lost royalty to a hidden realm, never knowing her true identity and inheritance, and under attack from otherworldly forces wanting to usurp her throne. I mean I probably would have enjoyed that more, pushing our flinty hitman into entertaining fish-out-of-water fantasia rather than more hitman shootouts on repeat.
Dust Bunny was a frustrating experience for me from a creator that I frankly expected more from. Fuller’s always had a penchant for twee whimsy, genre blending, dark humor and the macabre, but I didn’t find his film debut nearly as cute and quirky as his television output. I found much of the tone grating and overly stylized, and while I’m sure the mannered directing is meant to better convey a fable, I impatiently grew tired of the minimalist sets, the repetitive deadpan dialogue, and the surprising lack of imagination. I wish the last act had been the whole movie. I can see fans of more malevolent 1980s children’s movies finding something to enjoy here, and over decades Fuller has certainly established enough of a fanbase to declare any entity a possible burgeoning cult movie. There are moments that made me reminisce about Jean-Pierre Jenuet (Amelie, City of Lost Children), but then I wondered what he would have done with this same premise and the comparison wasn’t so favorable any longer. I’m coming across too harsh because I wanted Dust Bunny to be much more given its premise and creative voice. There’s enough here that will qualify as passing entertainment for most viewers, especially for fans of twisted fairy tales. There’s just not enough here in execution to make me as eager for Fuller’s next feature film.
Nate’s Grade: C
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Wicked: For Good (2025)
To paraphrase a famous debate line, I knew Wicked, Wicked was one of my top films of 2024, and you, Wicked: For Good, are no Wicked. Obviously that’s not completely true as For Good is the second half of the adaptation of the popular Broadway musical, of which only the first act compromised the prior movie released a year ago. The problem was that the first Wicked movie felt complete, and had there never been another second after, it would have served as a fitting and even moving portrait of the unknown back-story to the Wicked Witch of the West and the implied propaganda that would taint the perception of the citizens of Oz. The movie was two hours and forty minutes but it felt extremely well-paced and developed. It felt, more or less, complete, even though I know it was only adapting half the musical. In short, it did too good of a job, and now Wicked: For Good suffers as a sequel because what’s left to tell just isn’t as compelling or as emotionally or thematically coherent as its charming predecessor. Plus, all the banger songs were clearly in the first movie.
After the events of the first movie, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivio) has assumed the mantle of the Wicked Witch of the West and is sabotaging the Wizard of Oz’s (Jeff Goldblum) plans at expansion and animal abuse. Glinda (Ariana Grande) is the Wizard’s public ambassador and the “good witch” to inspire the masses, even though she doesn’t possess actual magical abilities. Glinda wishes dearly that Elphaba will change her mind and decide to work with her and the Wizard. However, Elphaba wants to expose corruption, and the Wizard is at the top of her list of the corrupt and powerful needing to be toppled for good.
For Good suffers from the adaptation struggles the 2024 Wicked film was able to avoid. The first movie was an effervescent treat built upon a poignant friendship and some killer songs given the full showstopper visual treatment. It was a vibrant adaptation, and while it expanded upon the stage show significantly, the extra time with the characters felt like breathing space, and it all contributed to what felt to me like an extremely well paced and well developed and arguably complete movie experience. Now the second act of a musical is almost always the shorter of the two, and For Good is about 30 minutes shorter than its predecessor. The filmmakers even added two new songs for Oscar eligibility and further padding, neither of which are winners (more on the songs later in the review). That sense of care is not present in For Good, as characters are frustratingly repeating beats they already worked through. Take for instance Glinda, who begins the first movie as an entitled popular girl used to getting her own way, and by the end of the movie, she’s grown to see the world differently and through her sisterly friendship with Elphaba, she has a more empathetic and grounded perspective. She has already changed for the better, and yet in For Good it feels like the movie kicks her character growth backwards. She has to again learn that maybe the Wizard and others are not the best people in charge just because they are. Wicked is a victim of its own success. The character development and arc was so well realized in the first movie that Glinda feels like she’s repeating lessons she’s already learned. I also don’t buy Elphaba being seriously tempted by the Wizard’s offer of collaboration after all she experienced and learned earlier. It’s irksome to have the characters seem curiously different from where we left them in 2024’s Wicked. There is also a character relationship revelation that I and many others had figured out FROM THE OPENING SCENE of the first movie. Behold, dear reader, For Good doesn’t even address this until the last twenty minutes of the movie and it does absolutely nothing with this revelation. I was flabbergasted.
The biggest time-waster and padding is when Wicked drags The Wizard of Oz characters and plot incidents awkwardly into its own universe. Granted, the entire enterprise is supposed to be the unknown back-story for the villain of The Wizard of Oz which gives it its identity. Except Dorothy and her lot are not essential at all to telling this story, as evident with the sense that the 2024 Wicked could feel complete. Dorothy and her motley crew of locals, some of whom are made up of previously established characters, are given the Rosencrantz and Gildenstern treatment, meaning they’re primarily kept off-screen and incidental. You don’t even see Dorothy’s face once. These characters feel annoyingly tacked-on and inconsequential to the story we’ve already spent three hours with. They’re knowing nods for the audience and they’re also making efforts to better pad out the running time. I don’t fully comprehend their importance in this new retelling. The treacherous Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) sees the presence of Dorothy as an advantageous development, like she can use her as a Chosen One to thwart Elphaba. It’s never remotely explained why this makes sense. Why this person versus any other Oz citizen? Dorothy possesses special shoes but we’ve seen what can be accomplished with them. They’re not really some superpower or a weapon, more an item of personal attachment for Elphaba she would like returned. In this retelling, the entire inclusion of Dorothy and her friends is a means to an end for a public ruse. It might seem odd to say this Wizard of Oz back-story would have been better minus Dorothy but there it is.
Now it’s time to discuss the actual songs for this movie musical. The best known and most popular tunes were all in the first act and thus the first movie. The songs for For Good are a combination of middling ballads and continuation of the leitmotifs and themes of the previous one. There’s perhaps a bigger emotional current when characters bring back melodies and lyrics from the first movie to expand or contrast, like “I’m Not That Girl.” Did you want another song with Goldblum singing? The biggest number is “For Good” where Elphaba and Glinda face off and admit their shared sisterly love for one another, but again this was already established by the end of 2024’s Wicked. It’s more explicitly stated through song but the sentiment was evident to me already. Adding further disappointment, returning director John M. Chu (Into the Heights, Crazy Rich Asians) lacks the same thoughtful staging of the musical numbers in this edition. He is a filmmaker who innately knows how to adapt stage musicals into the medium of film, and he did so splendidly with 2024’s Wicked. With For Good, the staging lacks a real immersion and visual dynamism, often murky or overly saturated, like “No Good Deed” being performed almost entirely with intrusive sunsetting silhouettes dominating the screen. The less engaging songs, added with less engaging visual staging, make the movie feel longer and less jubilant. I don’t know if “For Good” has the intended emotional crescendo simply because this movie isn’t nearly as good.
As a personal note, the 2024 Wicked was the last movie I saw in theaters with my father while he was alive. We were supposed to see Gladiator II together as a family after Thanksgiving but he wasn’t feeling up to it, and then a little more than two weeks later he was unresponsive. I’m happy Wicked was such a pleasant and enjoyable experience for him, but as we left the theater, he asked me, “Wasn’t there supposed to be more?” We had seen the stage show when it toured through our city many years ago, and I remarked that there was going to be a whole second movie adapting the second act of the musical and it was going to be released in a year. He nodded and I felt the silent acknowledgement shared between us: he would not be around to see the conclusion, that it was a future unavailable to him. So it’s hard for me to not have some melancholy feelings with For Good, and I’ll admit maybe that’s influencing my critique.
Wicked: For Good is a frustrating, disappointing extension of what had been a sterling and magical original movie. It doesn’t outright ruin what came before it but confirms for me that 2024’s Wicked could stand on its own. The songs aren’t as good. The staging and visuals aren’t as good. The character development feels repeated and occasionally confounding. The plotting is stretched and unsatisfying. The inclusion of the more direct Wizard of Oz characters feels arbitrary and unnecessary. The actors are still charming and affecting and sing wonderfully, but they’re also unable to defy the gravity of the material they’re stuck with. If you’re a super fan of the source material, albeit the original story by L. Frank Baum, the 1939 Wizard of Oz movie, the Gregory Maguire book, the 2000s stage musical, or even the first movie, you will probably find enough to sing along to and walk away fairly happy. I loved the 2024 Wicked and was left mostly cold at the concluding half but I realize I very well may be a curmudgeonly minority here. My advice would be to consider the 2024 Wicked a complete movie and skip For Good.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Lilo & Stitch (2025)/ How to Train Your Dragon (2025)
Two new live-action remakes are recreating Millennial staples, Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon, as transparent facsimiles, and they’re both reasonably fine. If you’ve never watched either animated movie, you’d maybe even call the live-action versions pretty good for your first experiences with these stories. Both movies understand what works essentially from their predecessors and don’t reinvent the wheel. They keep things pretty safe and strict, which translates into pleasant but predictable entertainment for anyone familiar with the originals.
I don’t even know how to fully review these entries, which is why I’m combining them together. They’re both so thoroughly fine yet one is the highest-grossing movie of 2025 so far, the popularity of which I cannot explain. My conceptual issue with the nature of live-action remakes is the implicit belief that animated films improve when they are brought into a real-world setting. I strongly disagree. Animated movies can be vibrant, stylistic, and exaggerated in such daring and artistically enigmatic ways. Translating that into real-life often strips away that style or liveliness; take for instance how un-expressive and dour the “live-action” Lion King was, a collection of possessed (cursed?) taxidermy. Animation does not require verisimilitude to be entertaining or engaging. I’m also worried over the speed of which these live-action remakes are coming, now refreshing fairly recent movies. Has there been enough distance between now and 2010 to have compelling artistic differences with the original How to Train Your Dragon? Apparently not. When the live-action Moana comes out in 2026, will it be dramatically different or better than the animated version? I strongly doubt it. We need more distance from the original animated movies so the remakes aren’t just slavish yet inferior versions of the originals. There needs to be more than simply a tracing over. I don’t see this ending any time soon considering the commercial rewards, and so the live-action Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon continue to be good stories, just unnecessary.
Nate’s Grades: B
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A Minecraft Movie (2025)
I was fully prepared to dismiss A Minecraft Movie as junk for its target audience, and then a funny thing happened in fact pretty early in the movie: I was laughing. Then I laughed again. Genuine laughter. I’m here to say that the Minecraft movie is not the silly and stupid kid’s movie you may have dreaded. It’s actually a pretty pleasant fantasy adventure movie that, while aimed for kids, can still be enjoyable for like-minded adults looking for some colorful and silly escapism. It’s hip to be square, baby.
Steve (Jack Black) is a guy who loves to create, and mines for whatever reason, and finds a portal to another very cube-centrist world. In this new world, Steve finds friends and freedom, but this is ruined when a nefarious force comes through wanting to conquer this new world as well as Steve’s home world. He sends out help and seals off a portal. Years later, a pair of siblings, Henry (Sebastian Hansen) and Natalie (Emma Myers), move into Steve’s old home and discover his portal, along with an middle-aged arcade game champion and local legend, Garret (Jason Momoa), and realtor, Dawn (Danielle Brooks). These newcomers must adjust to this strange world and defend themselves against zombies, creepers, and other dangers. Fortunately, Steve serves as a valuable guide, but can they all defeat the evil forces?
There’s a robust silliness to Minecraft that invites you to not ever take things too seriously and have fun with the vibes. Much like the Super Mario Brothers adaptation, there isn’t really a story to adapt here. There were several moments that felt like it was a satirical parody of the fantasy adventure movie while also working as examples of fantasy adventure tropes. Refreshingly, much of the humor is not derived from fish-out-of-water juxtaposition. This could have easily been a “Well, that happened” kind of nonchalant comedy, holding up the weirdness to scrutiny for easy yuks. It finds better jokes through pushing further than simple observational irony (“My dad says math has been debunked”). It’s good-natured humor that keeps things positive and goofy, channeling the open-sandbox creativity of the video game. Its “be yourself” message is easier to accept than more disingenuous kid’s movie junk like The Emoji Movie. The Minecraft world is presented less as a purchasable video game rather than a new world to explore that rewards exploration (during daylight hours). The very enemy of the movie is a sorceress (voiced by Rachel House) that hates creativity and sees it as a waste in her pursuit of always plundering and hoarding more gold. I might be reaching but there seems even like a possible A.I. reading there, with our giant pig sorceress standing in for tech bros who are trying to eliminate avenues of creativity because all they care about is wealth and cannot understand the appeal of creativity. The movie has several little comic asides that caused me to chuckle and laugh and smile, and I looked over at my adult friend beside me for my screening, and his response was the same. We both had been surprisingly taken by the genial silliness of this movie.
Black (Jumanji) has become a kids’ movie juggernaut thanks to his zany energy and willingness to go above and beyond no matter the request. He’s a charming and delightful performer by nature, whether he’s voicing an animated character or singing a sexually explicit song about all the positions he will execute. He dips out for the first half hour after the exposition dump that opens the movie, but once he’s back on screen, it’s easy to remember there just isn’t another actor like Black. He’s funny and completely bought-in with whatever the movie asks for, but every single line and every single gesture is at a ten. He is selling every second of this movie and I can completely understand why some people just might get overstimulated by Black’s histrionics. You can tell the filmmakers were like, “We want our own version of ‘Peaches’ to go viral,” and so we get three different moments of Black singing original songs. This aspect was the most transparent and contrived decision that felt based upon chasing after the success of another movie popular with the kids. The actor I enjoyed the most was Momoa (Fast X) who has lots of fun undercutting his own masculine image and his character’s over-inflated ego masking his insecurity.
The visuals are bright and enjoyably retro. The Minecraft video game is famously low-grade with its pixelated graphics, more akin to the visual landscape of video games from the 1990s than 2011 when it was first published (it has since become the best-selling video game of all time). Starting with that visual scheme, it allows the movie to be good looking without having to be photo-realistic with its CGI. We have a stylized world to explore that’s full of vibrant colors and characters. This is easily the best looking movie of director Jared Hess’ (Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre) career. His skewed sensibilities work as a nice fit with the comic direction of the movie, and there are some engaging visual arrangements.
Regrettably, this adventure is a bit of a boys-only club. The female half of our adventurers don’t really get the attention that the boys do. Both Natalie and Dawn sit out for long stretches of the movie that I forgot they were in the movie. Usually, these kinds of stories make it so each character has some kind of arc that can be fulfilled by the end, even if it’s minor. I suppose you might be able to argue that Natalie is learning to accept the responsibility of being a parental figure to her younger sibling, and Dawn getting the gumption to quit her job to pursue her dream of running a petting zoo. I’m not keen on bestowing credit for just having a scene at the end where the characters celebrate whatever their goals had been. If you don’t see the work and the development toward those goals, then you don’t get the credit. Why can’t these women have their own adventure that meaningfully connects to the larger plot? Or, even better, why can’t they also go along and contribute to the quest along with all the boys? It’s not like I think the movie is actively trying to downplay the role and importance of women, but it’s also disappointing that there are clear tiers of the characters as far as what kinds of fun and story integration they ultimately earn.
Behold, the Gen Alpha cultural epoch and its name is “chicken jockey.” By now you may have heard of this infamous scene that has caused some theaters to erupt in a calamity of noise, rowdy behavior, and throwing a live chicken at the screen. I even had a theater employee warn our audience before the movie began what is acceptable behavior and how people not abiding by these expectations would be removed from the theater. I’ve been watching movies my entire adult life and other than special screenings for movies intended for audience interaction, like Rocky Horror and The Room, I have never had a theater employee warn me about proper decorum, and this was before the Minecraft movie. It’s astounding. What’s also astounding is how ultimately meaningless this moment is. It’s a baby zombie that falls atop a chicken and rides it, and from what I’m told, this is a very rare occurrence in the game, but I guess it means something more to a generation of fans relishing a rare reference in their favorite game. While I was standing outside the restroom waiting for my own kid to return, a little girl was impatiently asking her father if he was done using the restroom, much to his growing annoyance. “Please hurry. I don’t want to miss the chicken jockey part,” she explained in desperation. I’m happy that this moment seems to be so highly anticipated for millions of fans, but as an outsider, this moment feels so incidental and flimsy that it would be like a generation excitedly waiting for Indiana Jones to lean against one particular wall.
This movie could have been so much worse, and the fact that it’s relatively breezy, funny, and entertaining for non-fans of Minecraft, such as myself, counts as a success in my book. It’s telling that the title is A Minecraft Movie and not The Minecraft Movie. It is but one story in this universe, and given the popularity, it will surely not be The Last Minecraft Movie. Its runaway success at the box-office means we’re probably headed for even more Gen Alpha-centered game adaptations, like some Roblox game you’ve never heard about if you’re over the age of twenty. Hey, it all might work somehow. This one did.
Nate’s Grade: B
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Moana 2 (2024)
It’s hard not to see the DNA of its original incarnations as a TV series for Disney Plus, as well as the awkward adjustments to slap this together into a feature film. Unless you’re a super fan of the original Moana who needs any additional content, you’ll likely have a less than impressive response to Moana 2. It feels quite episodic from villains and storylines popping up for small increments of time only to go away and be replaced by a new storyline, to a new batch of characters meant to hold our attention while other main characters, in particular Maui (Dwayne Johnson), sit out for long stretches. The animation is a notable step down as well, and while it’s still pleasing to watch and far from bad, it’s lacking the detail and refinement of the feature team, especially with lighting, as everything in this world lacks shadows with such high key lighting washing everything out. Without Lin-Manuel Miranda returning, it’s obvious the songs will not be nearly as catchy and enchanting, and the tunes for Moana 2 are pretty instantly forgettable. I’m struggling to rethink any melody right now as I write this. It’s hard not to feel like everything is so slight, from the storytelling to the visuals to the songs to the inclusion of the beloved characters from the original. I loved Moana and consider it the best of modern-day Disney, and I’m clearly not alone from the box-office dominance that the sequel was able to achieve. I actually think I would have preferred future Moana adventures as a TV series because the mythology and world has more to explore. But that version of new Moana has been transformed, Frankenstein-style, into a releasable feature film, one that suffers in the transformation into something it’s not suited for. Disney made a billion dollars from this gamut, but the rest of us are left with a Moana 2 that had much further to go.
Nate’s Grade: C
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