Masters of the Universe (2026)

As a guy who had a somewhat intense He-Man phase in his childhood, I hardly know what to say about this sad attempt at nostalgia baiting by Travis Knight, the director of the only good live action Transformers film – Bumblebee.

Unfortunately, this ain’t no Bumblebee, kids. For a film that has less plot than many a short film, this somehow manages to be nearly two and a half hours (too) long. It’s so slow, we get our first He-Man transformation an hour into the non-proceedings. But then, how else to fit all of the “jokes” in, and that’s why we’re here, right?

And with jokes I mean the sort of winking, no actual jokes included awkward bullshit every movie that didn’t understand why the Guardians of the Galaxy movies worked now uses to undercut every single moment in a nerdcore movie an audience member might actually think is awesome (which really is what this should be all about, even Cannon knew this much about pulp filmmaking), and to destroy every single emotional beat this bloated monstrosity otherwise might have had. Hell, Masters of the Universe doesn’t even manage to utilize a needle drop of Queen’s “Princes of the Universe” properly, because it does of course need to make exactly the “joke” you’ll expect it to make at this point.

For a film that really wants to get my nostalgia money, the tone feels eternally (see what I did there, I’m just as funny as the script) embarrassed by the toy line and cartoons it is based off, always going for the easiest joke (Fisto, anyone?). Consequently, the whole film shows no actual appreciation of what could be fun about all of this.

The actors mostly show themselves equally unenthusiastic (in a way the now much belittled Marvel would never let anyone get away with in one of their films not directed by Waititi), apart from Idris Elba and Alison Brie, who make actual acting choices and have actual screen presence. Jared Leto’s Skeletor is even worse than his Exxxtreme Joker was (at least you could understand all of what he said there), and Nicholas Galitzine and Camila Mendes are less expressive than the action figures they portray.

Man, do I suddenly feel old and grumpy.

Three Films Make A Post: Secluded getaway. Killer views.

The Rental (2020): Despite Sheila Vand, Alison Brie, Dan Stevens and Jeremy Allen White being no core cast to sneeze at, Dave Franco’s film about two couples going on a weekend vacation and crashing against most of them being pretty shitty people as well as someone really, really not liking them doesn’t do a lot for me. In part, it’s the too slow pacing of Franco’s and Joe Swanberg’s script, spending too much time on characters that simply aren’t terribly interesting, until it finally gets up to very rote thriller tropes realized competently but without verve.

The whole thriller/horror part certainly isn’t helped by the film never getting around to telling the audience why we’re supposed to care for these characters under threat anyway, so their fates aren’t exactly keeping one’s eyes open.

The Wave (2019): Gille Klabin’s semi-trippy film about a corporate lawyer on his way to become a total piece of human crap played by Justin Long learning a valuable – and rather final – lesson about the universe (apparently, it wants balance, maaaan) after not saying no to drugs, is surprisingly bland for a film containing a giant drug trip, time jumps and the stuff of “lost in the city” movies. The film’s surrealism simply doesn’t hit, the drug visions and shifts having a blandly banal air to them rather akin to the banality of its protagonist’s style of evil, really not breathing an air of the actual surreal as much as one of the try-hard surreal.

Not helping is the banality (yep, that word again) of the film’s philosophy, the sort of thing a film would need considerably more charm to sell than this one shows.

The Cleaning Lady (2018): Ending on another film that leaves me nonplussed, Jon Knautz’s horror movie about a woman with a “love addiction” problem making the classic movie mistake of befriending a member of the lower classes (it’s feeling rather Victorian around here) and landing in the hands of a violent psychopath doesn’t just annoy me with its implied politics. It makes the much bigger mistake of not being good enough as a thriller and a horror movie to not let me overlook its politics. Sure, it adds some mildly crass violence to at least give its villainess more of a background but not really even attempts to sell  her as an actual human being instead of a caricature of suffering turned evil.


When it comes to the shock and the suspense, the film’s just okay, with a couple of scenes that don’t quite work or simply lack the imagination for any of this to have much of an impact.