What’s It About

Based on the 2018 novel by Adeyemi. Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. Everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl, and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.

What’s It About

Unlike the 1968 Steve McQueen original or the 1999 Pierce Brosnan remake—where a billionaire steals art purely for an adrenaline rush—Jordan’s iteration focuses on a personal mission. His Thomas Crown is a gentleman thief attempting to repatriate precious artifacts from colonial powers and return them to their rightful creators.

What’s It About

Two rock-bottom drivers transport a wealthy teen to rehab, but their simple job spirals into a chaotic journey of drugs, danger and crime as their passenger derails their plans.

What’s It About

A modern family relocates to the countryside, where the children discover a magical tree with eccentric residents. They are transported to fantastical lands, where they rekindle their family bond through adventures.

What’s It About

An idyllic suburban town descends into madness when a mysterious ice cream man serves sweet treats that turn children into homicidal maniacs.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Avatar Aang, the world’s last Airbender, embarks on an epic quest to find an ancient power that could save his culture from extinction.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender didn’t need to fight this hard just to find an audience, yet Paramount made sure it did anyway. The studio first promised this movie for the big screen, then pulled it over to streaming, then watched helplessly as the whole film leaked online months before anyone could buy a ticket. After that mess, the studio scrambled and tossed in a one week theater run in just two cities before pushing the wide streaming release out to this July. None of that behind the scenes drama shows up inside the actual movie, and that is a good thing, because what plays out on screen deserves far better treatment than it received. The story happens a while after the original series, when the characters have grown, and each has their own burden to carry. One of the characters, Katara, rules the Republic City. While Zuko is working hard on the reconstruction of the Fire Nation. Sokka keeps working on the inventions. The character named Toph is training the next generations of Earth-Benders, while Aang keeps searching through the ruins of war-devastated civilizations. However, he has the pressure coming from the fact that he is the only Airbender left behind. Eventually, Aang meets a group of nonbending ones that feel oppressed by bendy communities. Aang’s encounter with The Denied leads him to the discovery of the powerful staff that has the potential to revive airbending. This leads Aang to Tagah, who has been frozen for ages and who has her own agenda. This is where the movie shows its true worth. Dave Bautista plays Tagah here, and it’s quite an unusual role for him. Mostly, he is cast as a powerful personality dominating the scene physically. However, this time he plays a tragic individual who lost everything and who’s got real anger. Bautista performs this role with true emotions, and we can hear the pain in his voice when the character speaks about his past. That care is evident in how the characters are portrayed in the animated series. This is the first time these characters have been voiced by Asian American and Native American actors, with Jessica Matten being Katara, Roman Zaragoza as Sokka, Dionne Quan as Toph, and Steven Yeun as Zuko. This change is not just about the actors but also about the suitability of the scenes they perform in. The most interesting actor is Yeun, as he has to depict Zuko’s pain about a poor family life. Matten and Zaragoza didn’t have much to do because the movie is only 90 minutes long, and most of the time is devoted to Aang. Quan has even fewer scenes, with only one short training scene featuring her. It is one thing to have a role in the movie but a different thing to have something to say. Eric Nam takes Aang through it all as smoothly as possible. He keeps his voice consistent during the prolonged stretch that Aang must face where his people could be lost forever. From that moment, Aang experiences that sadness, which is felt throughout the film and can be compared to Aang’s childhood feeling of guilt after the Fire Nation destroyed his homeland. The film lets its audience deal with that feeling rather than trying to move on quickly, and it eventually pays off in several scenes that have more impact than anyone would have thought in a movie that deals with magic and elemental combat. Visually, what we see is just out of this world. The animation by Flying Bark Productions and Studio Mir showcased a mix of hand-drawn characters combined with hand-painted backgrounds inspired by ancient Chinese watercolor paintings. This makes all the locations look beautiful despite taking place during massive battles. One of the problems with this movie is that the portrayal of the villains falls flat. Though the villains begin with a valid issue, as they see benders controlling a world they cannot access, they lack character development and remain just angry villains fighting for revenge. The audience will be disappointed because Tagah’s big twist, even though it is powerful, does not shock any viewers who pay attention to the film. The use of Taika Waititi’s voiceover for one of the characters makes the scene absurd, even though it was supposed to be serious, leaves no room for doubt. However, the weaknesses of the movie don’t make it a failure. Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender manages to depict hardships like the death of a beloved one and the loss of culture in a more sophisticated way than many other animated films and gives one actor a role that fits him perfectly.

OUR RATING – A TRUE AVATAR 8

What’s It About

When a reunion trip turns into a robbery, four friends discover the mansion’s owners, ghosts from the 1950s, never left. Trapped by the spirits planning a demonic sacrifice, the friends must battle supernatural terror to survive the night.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

“Haunted Heist” tries to scare you and make you laugh at the same time, and it fails at both jobs. This new horror comedy takes four gifted Black comedians, locks them inside a haunted mansion, and then forgets to hand any of them something real to work with. What is left behind is ninety minutes of shouting, weak jokes, and a ghost story that never settles on what it wants to be. The movie was shot on location in Detroit, and the mansion at the center of the story is a real one, a home once owned by Motown founder Berry Gordy Jr. in the city’s Boston-Edison district. It is a piece of Black history sitting right there on screen, and it deserves better than what this script does with it. “Haunted Heist” had its first public showing at Fantastic Fest in 2025 before landing in theaters this year, and the buzz around a horror comedy stacked with this much comedic talent should have meant something. Instead, the talent behind the camera gets buried by a screenplay that never figures out its own tone. The film opens with Terrance, who goes by T, played by Karlous Miller, walking out of prison a free man. His former cellmate, a man named Ratface George, played by Anthony “Tony” Baker, slips him a ring before they part and swears it carries some kind of protective power. T doubts the story, but he puts the ring on anyway and heads out into the world. Once he is free, T tracks down three old friends he has not spoken to in years. Shari, played by Tiffany Haddish, runs an online channel where she pushes questionable products to keep her follower count climbing. Ron, played by Lil Rel Howery, is a soft-spoken father working through a rough divorce from his wife, Joanna, played by LaKeysha Edwards. Ellis, played by Andrew Bachelor, is a business owner who just got pushed out of the company he built. T invites the three of them to what he calls a weekend getaway, a rundown mansion sitting empty on the edge of Detroit. Once everyone shows up, T reveals his true plan. The house holds a hidden object called the Ceremonial Jawbone Dagger, said to be worth twenty million dollars, and he wants their help finding it so the group can split the money four ways. Ron doesn’t want to get involved in the robbery and tries to get away, but the mansion doors refuse to open no matter how much he pulls them. Eventually, Ron gives in when his mind wanders to the possible financial windfall. At this point in the story, we see how out of hand things are, and the situation turns out to be much worse than money. The mansion is inhabited by ghosts Alton and Marjorie Dempsey, played by Brett Gelman and Ari Dayan, who are convinced they are still living in the old days, when slavery was a reality. The couple´s scenes hit us with a lot of plantation-related jokes and everything that boils down to a punchline instead of something serious. When Ellis´s assistant Jared (Stephen Blackwell) shows up wanting to party, Marjorie eradicates him in no time. Hoping to summon something strong enough to protect everyone, Shari flips through an old spellbook and instead calls back Ron’s late grandmother, Gram Hawkins, played by Tara Terry, who looks just as confused as everybody else in the room. From here the film stumbles into one of its lowest points, a scene built around a ghostly love triangle that reaches for shock instead of laughs. Ron sums up the moment himself, cracking that it plays like a twisted take on “Roots.” It is a line that says more about the movie’s problems than the movie itself ever manages to say. This brings us to the big dilemma regarding “Haunted Heist.” Does it really offer its actors anything new, or is it just putting them back in the roles they’ve always played? Haddish, Howery, Bachelor, and Miller have done much better in other movies, but here they are merely playing one-dimensional puppets. Treva doesn’t develop her sharp-tongued persona in a single scene. Ron remains that nervous guy. Ellis continues to be a hustler with a softened conscience. The script barely allows them to make use of their past migraines. Director Lil Rel Howery really does show some talent when it comes to filmmaking. There’s a séance scene about halfway through the film that demonstrates some clever lighting choices which manage to create one genuinely fun moment, and some quick pans add some much-needed energy to the screenplay. Unfortunately, the special effects look cheap throughout the film, the pacing drags badly in the last twenty minutes, and the film seems to be desperately trying for a touching finish that it simply isn’t able to achieve. The plot that ties the knife and the ghosts together seems far too thin and half-baked, almost as if the screenwriters took a dozen good ideas and decided to use all of them instead of going with the strongest one. There is a good movie somewhere in “Haunted Heist,” a movie in which a bunch of buddies fight their demons and become closer in the process. Unfortunately, we never see this version of the movie. Instead, we get a production that wastes a great cast, relies on old stereotypes of race and slavery for laughs, and doesn’t trust its own idea enough to take the time and develop it properly.

OUR REVIEW – A LIL REL 3

What’s It About

A 40-year-old executive ends up at a three-day bachelor party with twenty-somethings after being mistakenly included in their chat group.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

Kevin Hart plays Joe Nixon, a forty-something ad executive who seems to have his whole life locked down. He drives a Lamborghini, lives in a beautiful apartment in New York City, and dates Jennifer (Teyana Taylor), a smart doctor who is ready for him to finally propose. Joe is also about to land a huge promotion at his ad agency, until a young coworker calls his new vodka commercial “cringe.” That one word sends Joe into a full panic. He realizes he no longer understands what young people want, and if he can’t fix that fast, his career might stall out for good. Right around that same moment, Joe gets added to a group text by mistake. The chat belongs to four young men planning a bachelor party weekend in Miami: Mason (Mason Gooding), the groom, who is having quiet doubts about the wedding; Nick (Marcello Hernandez), Mason’s loud and overprotective best friend; Hunter (Ben Marshall), still hurting from a recent breakup; and Freshman (Kam Patterson), a sweet but constantly confused member of the crew. Instead of admitting he joined the chat by accident, Joe sees a chance to use these young men for research. He decides to tag along on their trip and study them so he can save his ad campaign. Here is where the movie starts fighting itself. Joe could just tell the group the truth and offer to help pay for the weekend, and honestly, most guys would probably say yes to free money and free drinks. Instead, he quietly rents them a huge beach house and hides a camera inside his necklace so he can film them without asking. This choice does not make much sense, but the whole plot needs Joe to keep lying all weekend, so logic takes a back seat early and never really comes back. To its credit, the movie stumbles onto one real good idea. These four friends have grown up together, and they actually care about talking through their feelings and building real memories instead of posting everything online. They even agree to leave their phones behind for the weekend, which wrecks Joe’s plan to film footage for his campaign. That small twist on the old “kids these days” joke is smart, and for a second it hints at a better, more thoughtful comedy hiding somewhere inside this movie. Sadly, the film drops that idea almost as fast as it brings it up, running instead toward a drug smuggling plot, an angry cartel boss played by Michael Mando, and a long stretch of vomit jokes about too much stomach medicine. The most frustrating part of “72 Hours” is how it treats its own star. More than once, Joe snorts cocaine and turns, right away, into a loud, cartoon version of Tony Montana from “Scarface,” accent and all. The movie even has one of the young men ask out loud if this bit is racist, and another character answers, flatly, that yes, it is. Admitting something is wrong does not make it funny, though, and the joke gets repeated so many times that it stops feeling like a real point and starts feeling lazy. Kevin Hart has real talent and real timing, the kind that once got him compared to a young Eddie Murphy. Watching him get handed the same tired bit again and again, instead of a script that trusts him with something sharper, is honestly kind of sad. Teyana Taylor deserves better than what she gets here, too. Jennifer is set up as a smart doctor with a big career chance of her own, but the movie never lets that choice belong to her. Her whole storyline only exists to ask whether Joe will finally grow up and commit to her. A talented actress playing a strong, driven woman should be a good sign on paper, but if that character only exists to wait around for the man to figure his life out, that is not really progress at all. The only good thing about this whole thing is Kam Patterson. His character Freshman really brings something special to each scene he’s in, and manages to get laughs from the script that doesn’t give anyone else the same opportunity. Of course, Marcello Hernandez and Ben Marshall, the guys from SNL, get to shine a bit too, but mostly they just have to give us information presented in the format of jokes. Director Tim Story, who worked with Hart before on “Ride Along,” never seems to settle on what kind of movie this is supposed to be. One minute it is a loud, gross-out party comedy, and the next it is a quiet story about marriage, friendship, and getting older. Four credited writers pile plot on top of plot here, including a strange, pointless side trip involving a sinking boat and, somehow, whale body parts, and none of it earns the emotional moments the film clearly wants to land. A movie this messy needed a much steadier hand behind the camera. So, “72 Hours” had everything going for it. There was a nice plot, a good cast of new stars, and an actor who has already had success with a comedy. And yet, they did not use any of this. They just wanted to shock the audience instead of just making them laugh. There’s a possibility that somewhere in “72 Hours” there could have been a smart movie about a person discovering that young age cannot be secretly filmed or learned. Other than a 2-minute realization dialogue, this was not the case.

OUR RATING – A HART-LESS 3

What’s It About

After Acme products fail him one too many times in his dogged pursuit of the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote decides to hire a billboard lawyer to sue the Acme Corporation.

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Terror strikes when a flight from Los Angeles to Shanghai goes down in the Pacific Ocean. Stuck on a sinking plane, survivors soon find themselves in a fight for their lives as man-eating sharks start to circle the wreckage.

MOVIESinMO REVIEW

A broken lithium battery triggers a series of calamities that truly disintegrate a passenger airplane. The action goes quickly, and the anticipation is quite real. For a moment, it seems that the movie promises to deliver something spectacular. But once the airplane lands, the sharks arrive, and the movie fails to deliver anything after this. The difference between what the movie is capable of doing and what it ultimately does turns out to be the heart of the story. Harlin made his name in the 1990s, directing action flicks that were loud, bold, and interesting enough for audiences. However, even if he possesses enough talent to make great features, the script, which was developed by four writers, treats the actors as mannequins rather than its characters, making it impossible for the camera to help them make their characters alive. Take Ben, portrayed by Aaron Eckhart, for example. He is meant to be the unwilling hero who acts as the second-in-command only after the captain gets injured. But Eckhart has very little to work with. There is one line describing his background story about taking care of a sick child, and the line is followed by no elaboration. He emerges from the crash alive, gives commands, and appears anxious, but the movie never calls upon him to earn his rank. It is not because he deserves it. The same applies to Ben Kingsley in the role of the senior captain, who has around ten minutes of screen time at most. It is just a paycheck for him. This is where the movie falters the most. Deep Water assigns roles without any justification for why anyone is in them. A disaster movie operates on how significant the danger is to its characters, and this movie makes sure to keep everyone at a distance from the action. Parents head off to the airplane toilet, leaving their children behind, and then they disappear from the movie. A pair of gamers express some feelings for one another that go nowhere. An elderly woman gives dating advice to someone, and that is her contribution. None of these people have anything more than job descriptions. The movie confuses being there with serving a purpose. The one performance that breaks through belongs to Angus Sampson, playing Dan, the loud, chain-smoking passenger whose busted phone charger causes the whole disaster. Sampson leans all the way into the character’s ugliness, and it works, mostly because he is the only actor allowed to actually do something instead of just standing in a scene looking scared. That says less about his performance and more about how little the script gives everybody else. When the sharks show up, the film adopts a pattern that drones on without variation. It’s simple: a leg goes into the water, a shark bites it off, there’s blood, and the same cycle repeats. The special effects are terrible, bearing more of a resemblance to television than to cinema. There are a few shocking deaths that were meant to be funny, including the final helicopter scene that is the only time the filmmakers realized that this is a comedy, although it is too late for the realization to make a difference. What makes this harder to shake off is that the film clearly had the pieces to say something with its setup. Every survivor lands in a different broken piece of the plane, trapped with a different problem: one group stuck underwater sharing a shrinking air pocket, another drifting in open water with nothing but a life vest between them and the sharks below. That is a smart way to structure a disaster movie, giving each cluster of survivors its own version of the same nightmare. It is one of the few ideas here that actually shows some thought. But the film never follows through. It sets up interesting situations and then resolves them the same flat way every time, with a shark grabbing someone and the scene cutting away before it means anything. There is a version of Deep Water that works. Harlin has made a great shark movie before, back in 1999 with Deep Blue Sea, a film that knew it was ridiculous and had fun being ridiculous. This one wants credit for the same campy spirit without doing the work to earn it. It plays things safe right when it should be leaning into the chaos, and the result sits in an uncomfortable middle ground, too serious to be a good time and too silly to be taken seriously. It is hard to overlook how familiar I find this whole movie! Harlin had been doing all kinds of work as a director for years now, and here he is once again, handed another mid-budget flop even while other directors with better intuitions and names are waiting for their turn to make movies. It is this frustration that underlies every unexciting frame of Deep Water. The same old familiar names appear again and again, and so the end result is a film that is sometimes impressive, but for the most part, without any content to it. Deep Water is not the worst shark movie ever made. It has one genuinely strong sequence, one performance worth watching, and a handful of moments dumb enough to be enjoyable by accident. But a movie this uninterested in its own people cannot expect an audience to care what happens to them. The crash is thrilling. Everything after it is a chore.

OUR RATING – A SLIGHT BITE 3