Glen Powell Was Great In The Running Man But The Movie Will Leave You Frustrated By The End
Of the two big releases this week, The Running Man is a better movie than Now You See Me, Now You Don't. But that's not a high bar to clear and neither movie is very good. Mini reviews of both as well as Bugonia, Regretting You, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere and Pets On A Train.
The Running Man should have been an August release. Action movie with no subtlety that (for the first two acts) has fun with the satirical elements of reality television. It also looks good…once again in the first two acts. Having this be 133 minutes does everyone a disservice.
Edgar Wright does well with a good premise but can’t land the plane in his movies. Baby Driver and especially Last Night In Soho are good movies that just go on for way too long. This is no exception.
Glen Powell was great casting here. You can’t help but like the guy so he makes it easy to root for him the entire time even when the movie drags to the end.
There are some interesting things here but it also does leave you frustrated by the end with some choices. But if you’re forgiving and looking for action, this is worth a watch.
The Running Man: B-
Now You See Me, Now You Don’t gives you the mindless yet mildly fun experience you expect from this series. While it’s not as good as the original, it’s quite a bit better than Now You See Me 2 (which is just a bad movie).
Rosamund Pike uses the most bizarre German accent I’ve ever heard. It’s a mix of Angela Merkel and Colonel Sanders. It’s like Bane or Jackson Maine where you want to imitate it the second you leave the theater. Why would Pike try to sound a little Southern? With this kind of movie, who cares? Nothing makes sense anyway.
Much like the original, this is best watched on a plane where it can amuse you for 110 minutes. But then allow yourself the magic trick of making this movie disappear from your brain right after seeing it.
Now You See Me, Now You Don't: C
Bugonia is a brilliant film that has a lot to say about poverty, mental illness, corporate greed and manages to do so in a very entertaining way. I absolutely loved most of this movie. However, to say it didn’t stick the landing is an understatement. Instead, it managed to break both of its legs on the landing and shit all over itself.
Because of that, I can’t call this great but there are certainly some great things about it. Jesse Plemons gives the best performance I’ve seen by anyone all year. It’s so difficult to make a kidnapper seem like someone you could see in your everyday life but he pulls it off. It’s such an earnest performance that you even have sympathy for the character at times.
Emma Stone is her usual brilliant self. So many actors and actresses would take those two Oscars and choose lighter work. She continues to take big chances whether it be her work with Yorgos or something like The Curse.
The ending of this did frustrate me but I must give Yorgos Lanthimos a ton of credit for making something that made me care so much.
Bugonia: B+
Regretting You is a movie about grief that has no understanding about grief, or the even the human condition.
Having Allison Williams in a movie like Megan works because she can be cold and disaffected. Here, she needs to be heartbeat of the movie and it doesn’t work. She loses her husband and sister, finds out they have been betraying her and you never believe she really cares.
The script does her no favors as it harshly jumps from being a drama about to loss to teen romance to sitcom. Allison McKenna and Mason Thames are nice enough kids in this but with other actual major life events happening, you never give a shit about them.
This is a pretty forgettable movie but I’ll always remember great character actor Clancy Brown as Gramps. It’s one of the most bizarre wastes of talent I’ve ever seen on screen. Cheers to air!
Regretting You: C-
There are pieces of Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (horrible name) that I appreciate. I like a biopic that deals with a specific moment in time as opposed to fitting 80 years into 130 minutes. It’s better storytelling. This deals with the making of the album Nebraska.
I think there could be a really good movie about the making of an album. This isn’t it. The third act is a meandering mess that washes away much of any goodwill from what you’ve already seen.
I also couldn’t believe Jeremy Allen White as Springsteen. Maybe it’s because Springsteen has been in the pop culture zeitgeist for so long? Or because White just doesn’t look like Springsteen at all. Whatever it is, I felt like I was watching a lousy episode of The Bear.
I’d love a movie that shows how a great album got made in an entertaining fashion. Maybe one day someone will make one.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere: C+
Pets On A Train is the Wal-Mart version of The Bad Guys. It tries to be a clever (and at times heartwarming) action movie for kids. In reality, it’s not good enough to be in theaters and only got on screens because there isn’t enough for families at the movies right now.
The main character is a raccoon named Falcon. You hear this name more in this movie than if there is an NFL game in Atlanta. This only has a 87 minute run time (thank god) and you hear the word “falcon” several hundred times. It’s unbearable.
This is just regurgitated slop they’ll put in front of kids because they figure kids don’t know any better. But what the movie studios are really saying is that families don’t deserve any better. It’s expensive for a whole family to go to the movies. Just save your money for Zootopia 2. The trailers alone show more effort than this.
Pets On A Train: D+
2025
1)Sinners
2)Weapons
3)One Battle After Another
4)Caught Stealing
5)The Long Walk
6)Presence
7)The Life Of Chuck
8)Black Bag
9)The Ballad Of Wallis Island
10)Warfare
11)Friendship
12)BUGONIA
13)Superman
14)Mission Impossible 8
15)28 Years Later
16)Novocaine
17)Fantastic Four
18)Roofman
19)The Naked Gun
20)Blue Moon
21)Final Destination 6
22)Frankenstein
23)The Amateur
24)Drop
25)Dangerous Animals
26)Predator: Badlands
27)Together
28)Black Phone 2
29)Death Of A Unicorn
30)The Accountant 2
31)The Damned
32)One Of Them Days
33)Materialists
34)Lilo & Stitch
35)Paddington 3
36)Thunderbolts
37)F1
38)The Smashing Machine
39)Clown In A Cornfield
40)Bring Her Back
41)Truth & Treason
42)Hell Of A Summer
43)Karate Kid 6
44)Good Boy
45)Downton Abbey 3
46)THE RUNNING MAN
47)Fight Or Flight
48)Valiant One
49)Sketch
50)The Roses
51)How To Train Your Dragon
52)Elio
53)Rule Breakers
54)Heart Eyes
55)The Conjuring 4
56)Mickey17
57)The Surfer
58)Relay
59)Tron 3
60)Last Breath
61)Flight Risk
62)SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE
63)Minecraft
64)Den Of Thieves 2
65)Dogman
66)Companion
67)Eddington
68)Good Fortune
69)Jurassic World Rebirth
70)The Senior
71)KPop Demon Hunters
72)Spinal Tap 2
73)Bone Lake
74)The Toxic Avenger
75)Ballerina
76)A Working Man
77)The Last Rodeo
78)Taylor Swift: Showgirl
79)Shadow Force
80)The Alto Knights
81)Honey Don’t
82)The Bad Guys 2
83)The Penguin Lessons
84)The Chosen Part 2
85)Looney Tunes
86)Opus
87)M3GAN 2
88)A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey
89)Becoming Led Zeppelin
90)Captain America: BNW
91)I Know What You Did Last Summer
92)Until Dawn
93)Soul On Fire
94)After The Hunt
95)Ne Zha 2
96)The Chosen Part 1
97)Riff Raff
98)The Home
99)Kiss Of The Spider Woman
100)Freakier Friday
101)Inheritance
102)Nobody 2
103)The Chosen Part 3
104)The Wedding Banquet
105)REGRETTING YOU
106)Smurfs
107)The Legend Of Ochi
108)Night Of The Zoopocalypse
109)PETS ON A TRAIN
110)Demon Slayer
111)The Phoenician Scheme
112)Sneaks
113)Ash
114)Jujutsu Kaiden
115)The King Of Kings
116)The Friend
117)Dan Da Dan 2
118)Light Of The World
119)Snow White
120)The Unbreakable Boy
121)Gabby’s Dollhouse
122)Brave The Dark
123)Wolf Man
124)Hurry Up Tomorrow
125)The Monkey
126)Love Hurts
127)Him
128)The Strangers 2
129)The Last Supper
130)Woman In The Yard
131)Bride Hard
132)Shelby Oaks
133)Juliet & Romeo
134)In The Lost Lands