The Deb

Posted on August 24, 2026 at 5:56 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Extremely strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking, teen drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some scuffles, no one badly hurt
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	August 25, 2026

Rebel Wilson’s “Pitch Perfect” experience and love of classic Hollywood shows in her first film as director, “The Deb,” with vibrant, ebullient musical numbers featuring an outstanding cast of young performers. It was released in Wilson’s home country of Australia in 2024 but is just now coming to the US on demand.

The basic plot is a classic city mouse and country mouse with one teenage cousin expelled from a posh private school in Sydney and sent to live with her rancher uncle and cousin in a remote rural community. On the surface it is brash and raunchy — the opening musical number with girls in plaid skirt and navy blazer school uniforms is a song about much they suffer from rich girl problems, with the repeated phrase often abbreviated as “FML.” But it is also heartwarming and refreshingly shrewd about cancel culture and teenage identity struggles. While the characters are exaggerated for comic purposes, the film is sympathetic to everyone.

The city cousin is Maeve (Charlotte MacInnes) and we are introduced to her via her podcast, where she disingenuously pretends that showing herself in a tiny bikini is fighting the patriarchy. It is clear that spouting aphorisms about heteronormativity and claiming to be the feminist voice of her generation are just click-bait expressions of teenage angst. As the school principal, who is also her mother, tells her, “You are not Malala. You don’t want change; you want attention.”

After Maeve rips open her shirt to flash the entire school she is sent to a rural community called Dunburn. She is picked up at the bus stop by her cousin Taylah (Natalie Abbott), via riding mower. Maeve’s uncle is Rick (Shane Jacobson), a widower who loves his daughter but relies on her to do farm chores and considers ramen a suitable dinner. Rick is also Dunburn’s mayor, which mostly means applying to the government for relief after a three-year drought that threatens the town’s economic viability.

The town’s most beloved tradition is The Deb, a throwback coming-out (to society, not out of a closet) gala where the girls wear poofy white dresses and are presented via a giant plaster clamshell. Taylah is looking forward to it. Maeve sees it as a juicy topic for a disdainful podcast about an “antiquated heteronormative s***show from hell…uniquely preserved from rural isolation.”

Wilson plays Janette, the owner of a beauty salon called Curl Up N Dye and the mother of Annabelle (Stevie Jean), leader of the trio of Dunburn mean girls, who perform as the Pixie Cups. Janette is grooming Annabelle to be a pop star and Wilson plays her as over-the-top outrageous, including insulting and being cruelly dismissive to her other daughter, who “identifies as a koala.”

Thankfully, the traditional makeover scene is subverted, everyone grows up a little (stay past the beginning of the credits for some reassurance along those lines) and Maeve’s savvy about creating viral content is used for good. What works best in the film are those musical numbers, with a lot of variety from pop to country to hip-hip. The stand-out a duet ballad with Maeve and Taylah singing separately about the impact of a spotlight, brought back later in a reprise. The screenplay is credited to Hannah Reilly, who wrote the play it is based on, with “additional writing by Rebel Wilson,” and it is pretty easy to figure out what Wilson added, mostly for her own character. This makes for some unevenness of tone that makes less accessible for the likely audience most interested in a story of young women trying to establish their identity and direction in a world that has a lot of unrealistic expectations.

Parents should know that this movie has extremely crude humor and very strong language. A character is persuaded by a boy to let him take a picture of her with her shirt off, which he shows off to other boys. There is some teen kissing and a teen who comes out as gay to a parent. There is smoking and teen drinking, and some scuffles (no one badly hurt).

Family discussion: Why is Maeve so angry and impatient? What makes her change her mind about Dunburn? What would you say to Jeanette?

If you like this, try: “Grease,” “Hey Hey It’s Esther Blueburger,” the “Mean Girls” musical, and the “Pitch Perfect” series

The Rivals of Amziah King

Posted on August 6, 2026 at 7:51 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language and some grisly images
Profanity:	Very strong and pervasive language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, references to drugs and drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Very graphic and disturbing images, very sad death, reference to suicide, murders
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 7, 2026

“The Rivals of Amzaiah King” is four or five movies in one, but what could have been jarringly uneven is mostly held together, thanks to the exceptionally gifted writer/director Andrew Patterson, whose acclaimed “Vast of Night” introduced us to a first-time, low-budget filmmaker who already had a deep understanding of cinematic storytelling. This one is part family drama, part crime story, part comedy (that school scene!), part heist story, part revenge, part coming of age, part tragedy, part comedy, so, kind of like life, plus the heartbeat throughout is one of the best soundtracks of the year.

The title character, ideal casting for Matthew McConaughey, who gives one of his career-best performances as a beekeeper and musician in a rural Oklahoma community. We first see him with his friends, performing in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant. The group includes his lawyer, Rippy (Rob Morgan), and Stephen (Benjamin Hardesty, real-life member of The Last Bison band and composer of many of the film’s songs). Amziah fits comfortably in his life, patient and gentle, as a beekeeper must be, with the gift of deep appreciation for each moment, especially if it involves bees or music. He has a wry sense of humor, sharp observations, and engages in non-stop picaresque commentary that does not hide an essential stillness and absence of judgment that the people around him find reassuring. In this community, anyone can play music or sing and no one minds much if someone has done time in prison. Amziah routinely hires ex-cons who cannot get a job anywhere else.

The local police interrupt the parking lot concert to ask for Amziah’s help in identifying the owner of some stolen vats of honey that have been recovered. He tells them the only possible way is if there is an identifying mark in the bottom of one of the barrels. And the only way to find if there is one is to empty it out, a complicated process because “there’s nothing heavier than honey” and the only way to empty it is to heat it and turn it over to let the honey slide out. They all go to his processing facility and Amziah calls a former employee named Remmick (Jake Horwitz, who also appeared in “Vast of Night”) to come help. Remmick brings along a friend named Komar (Tony Revolori), who knows nothing about processing honey but brags about knowing someone who has a Granada guitar.

It all seems idyllically cozy and we may think we’re in a sort of updated, profane version of Mayberry, until a shocking and very bloody industrial accident sends one of the group to the hospital, the first of several unexpected turns of plot and tone.

Amziah stops at a diner and discovers that his waitress, is Kateri (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass), a young women he and his late wife fostered for two years when she was young. He can see that she is guarded, but he quietly invites her to hear his group perform later in the week and he is delighted when she shows up. Soon she has moved back in with him and is working with him at the hives. He even coaxes her into singing a little bit.

So, now it’s shifted into a family drama about reunion and resilience. Briefly. Another twist is coming and the second half gets into the crime story, with a theft of bees and honey, an amateur detective tracking it down and uncovering some other crimes, a hacker named Oat (Cole Sprouse), a sad death, a police chase, some racial issues (Kateri is native American), a heist, murder, Kurt Russell, and more. Patterson somehow manages to hold it together in part thanks to goregous, roots-infused music throughout (produced by T. Bone Burnett), golden-infused cinematography from M.I. Littin-Menz (also from “The Vast of Night”), and editing from Patrick J. Smith that lends an impressionistic, folkloric tone, adding coherence to the otherwise-jarring shifts.

LookingGlass is a real find, with a luminousness and steadiness that lends eloquence to her expressive face. There are stand-out scenes, one almost slapstick when Amziah is called to rescue an elementary school from a swarm of bees, all of the music scenes, especially the impromptu jam session in Amziah’s small dining room, and an elaborate heist scene with a pause for some heartfelt confidences. A few of the twists are too jarring, and twice-explained analogy of the bee society is a rare instance of Patterson explaining too much, contrary to his usual respect for the audience in leaving just a bit more unsaid than we get in the average film and letting us fill in the rest from our own imagination and experience.

This movie is itself an experience, immersive, moving, shocking, scary, and the kind of characters you will miss when they are gone.

Disclosure Day

Posted on June 16, 2026 at 6:56 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images, and some strong language
Profanity:	A few strong words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended sci-fi action peril and violence, intense chase scenes, car crashes, explosions, guns, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 12, 2026

It’s not a spoiler; it’s right there in the title. Steven Spielberg’s latest film is not about whether there are aliens. There are. It’s about whether the government should tell us what it knows about them, and, if they don’t, whether someone should leak the information. And it is about empathy as the highest form of human — or other entity — communication, understanding, and evolution.

Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is the one who wants “disclosure day,” a global release of all the information. As the movie begins, his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson) has been kidnapped by some very intense and well-equipped people who work for Wardex, the shadowy government contractor that keeps the secrets. It is led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). They will echange her for the contents of Daniel’s backpack, thumb drives that contain the entire history of alien encounters and their technology, meaning that it’s also the history of the government secrets about them. Daniel arrives to make the exchange, turns over the thumb drives, and then he and Jane escape with the help of a mysterious sort of carved metallic slightly twisted block about the size of a small bluetooth speaker that must be handled very gently and carefully. It kind of looks like that thing Ryland grabs on his space walk in “Project Hail Mary.” Hmmm.

Meanwhile, television meterologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is talking to her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) as they have breakfast and she gets ready to go to work. There’s a restlessness about her. She can’t seem to sit still, and Jackson complains that she always wants to move. And then things start to get strange. She gets stopped for speeding on the way to work and somehow when she looks the cop in his eyes she knows all the details about his morning and what he needs to do to take care of his wife and baby. And then, when she goes on camera to give the weather report, instead of words, gutteral clicks come out instead, and she collapses.

The rest of the story is about Noah trying to stop Daniel from going public, Margaret trying to figure out what is going on with her and how she suddenly knows all kinds of information from different languages to what the people in front of her are thinking and feeling to urgent messages about a man she has never heard of — Daniel.

It is unnecessary to say that Steven Spielberg is one of the most extraordinary masters of cinematic storytelling of all time, but it may be worth saying that he brings every bit of that plus the heart and wisdom of a man who will turn 80 later this year to this film, with a story he created as the final chapter that began with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and continued with “E.T. The Extra-terrestrial.” The man whose company logo is a boy and his alien friend bicyling in front of a full moon has always looked to the skies and found it filled with wonder. (Yes, there were scary and desctructive aliens in Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” but he says that was more a reaction to 9/11 than a part of this vision.)

While “The Fablemans” was explicitly autobiographical, this film seems even more revealing about Spielberg’s perspective and values. Like most of his movies, the theme of home is central, with a return to a replica of a character’s childhood home is significant and deeply moving to the character and the audience. Anyone who saw “The Fablemans” will remember the impact a train crash scene the young Spielberg saw in “The Greatest Show on Earth” impressed him so viscerally he created it in the first footage he shot. Here, there is an extraordinary train scene, brilliantly shot and edited, harking back to that first moment that began his life as a filmmaker.

Spielberg says this film comes straight from his own beliefs and the consistenct reports from people who have seen…something…that may be known to authorities who do not share it. It also comes from his own spirit, his gorgeous sense of wonder and optimism and spacious humanity. It even encompasses faith. One of the most significant characters in the film is a nun, beautifully played by Elizabeth Marvel, and another character also has a strong connection to Catholicism. She is there to show Jane and us that faith and science are more than compatible; they support and enhance each other. The better we understand science and all aspects of reality, the better we understand that no matter what or how clear our concept of a diety is, science helps us embrace it with more clarity.

The movie rewards rewatching to be aware of all of the choices that went into every shot to tell us everything we need to know about the characters and what was happening but also to appreciate the bigger concepts, the challenge of being aware, the vital imporance of fearless curiosity, and above all, no matter how much our fragile hearts try to resist, the central purpose of finding understanding and connection.

Parents should know that this movie has some intense and exciting scenes of action and peril with chases, guns, and explosions. Characters use a few strong words.

Family discussion: If you met an extra-terrestrial, what would you say? What would you ask? Why was re-creating the childhood home so important? Who should decide what we know?

If you like this, try: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind, “E.T..” and “Project Hail Mary”

The Devil Wears Prada 2

Posted on April 30, 2026 at 5:06 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for strong language and some suggestive references
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	None
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 1, 2026
Date Released to DVD:	June 30, 2026

Witty barbs, fabulous fashion, a touch of romance, some big name cameos and a sensational surprise appearance by a superstar singer — this sequel to the film that was foundational for a generation of millennials is worth the wait. There is a lot to love in The Devil Wears Prada 2 for those who are most familiar with the original (look for Andy’s cerulean blue sweater and a pair of near-identical belts) but returning screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna knows that the world has changed and her characters have, too.

In the original, based on the novel by former Vogue intern Lauren Weisberger, the fashion magazine plays an enormously influential role in a multibillion dollar industry. It’s not that Runway editor in Chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) can just get away with being legendarily imperious and laser-focused; she needs to be to do that job. Well, possibly she does not need to be quite so demanding, but as we saw when she acknowledged the reality of a second divorce in one of the first film’s key scenes, she has feelings and even moments of vulnerability.

Times have changed. When we last saw Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), she was the second assistant to Miranda, essentially getting coffee, dropping off the draft versions of the magazine at Miranda’s home, and hanging up her coat. She was also being terrorized by the first assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt) and getting some support from the magazine’s loyal photo editor, Nigel (Stanley Tucci).

In the opening scene of the new film, Andy and the newspaper she works for receive prestigious journalism awards just as the entire staff is fired and the publication shut down by its new owners, some sort of investor group that sees them only as a balance sheet liability. Where the first film was based on the then-reasonable assumption that journalism produced credible information that was widely respected, even a speciality publication like a fashion magazine, this one recognizes that people are as likely to get their information from social media as a newspaper and that as a result of the cacophony of information and re-alignment of advertising and other revenue sources, the providers have become siloed and shrill.

Runway, perhaps from the pressure to publish constantly, made an embarrassing mistake in an article about a fast fashion brand and is widely derided for it. (The memes online are very funny). The wealthy owner of Runway and other publications, Irv Ravitz (Tibor Feldman) wants to respond by bringing in someone with excellent credentials as a journalist. So he hires Andy as Runway’s features editor without asking or even notifying Miranda. Her first assignment is to accompany Miranda and Nigel to grovel before one of their biggest advertisers, Dior, now led by Emily. And Miranda says to her, “All I need to do is bide my time until you fail.”

Miranda’s diva behavior may be diminished in light of the altered status of the magazine and a complaint to HR that now has her hanging up her own coats. But she is still a Dowager Duchess-level purveyor of acid commentary and Streep, as always is never short of magnificent, clearly relishing the opportunity to make Miranda more complex and real. Blunt, whose appearance in the first film was a major breakthrough for her, also gets to do more with Emily. All three are spectacular.

The men in the lives of these women are Kenneth Branagh as Miranda’s violinist husband (supportive), Justin Theroux as Emily’s billionaire boyfriend (comically arrogant), and Pete (Patrick Brammall), a dashing new love interest for Andy. They are very much secondary characters and do very well with it. Also worth spotting: Pauline Chalamet as a Runway staffer, Lucy Liu as a sought-after cover story subject, and many real-world celebrities, especially at Miranda’s Hamptons party, including Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad,, Jenna Bush Hager, Naomi Campbell, Winnie Harlow, Donatella Versace, Molly Jong-Fast.

And the fashion! Wild and stunning. The glamor includes a fabulous fashion show in Milan in addition to the eye-popping ensembles of the stars. Watch for Streep’s amazing tassel jacket, which should inspire a lot of ransacking of thrift stores from DIY fashionistas.

The balance of fashion, fun, and character development keeps things moving and it’s thoughtful enough to have some meaning but light enough to be entertaining. A lot has changed in the worlds of fashion and journalism in two decades, but director David Frankel, screenwriter McKenna, and the powerhouse cast know what it takes to make a movie as irresistibly appealing as a classic little black dress.

Parents should know that this film has some strong language and some suggestive references. Characters drink alcohol.

Family discussion: What news sources do you like and why? What outfit in the movie was your favorite? Should Andy write the book?

If you like this, try: “The Devil Wears Prada” and a great documentary about Vogue, “The September Issue“

Mother Mary

Posted on April 23, 2026 at 6:04 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for some violent content and language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Pills
Violence/ Scariness:	Graphic wounds, some self-inflicted, disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 24, 2026

“Mother Mary” gets some points for the singular vision of writer/director David Lowery, striking images, and game performances by the supremely talented Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, but not as many as it needs to overcome its pretentiousness, its pointlessness, and, worst of all, its ultimate emptiness. It wants so badly to be provocative and artistic but it is just boring.

Hathaway plays the title character, a hugely successful pop star along the lines of Lady Gaga, Madonna, and Chappell Roan. We see her performing in gigantic arenas, with fans overcome with joy, waving lit up cellphones. Mother Mary performs in stunning costumes, with headpieces that recall the literally iconic images of Medieval saints. Those scenes are strikingly filmed and Hathaway looks sensational and her singing is fully believable as pop star. The original songs are co-written by Jack Antonoff, Charli xcx, FKA twigs, and Hathaway.

On a dark and stormy night (the first tired trope of many), Mother Mary arrives at the shabby chic ancient-castle-like atelier of a successful fashion designer named Sam Anselm (Coel). Despite the protests of Sam’s assistant, Hilda (Hunter Schafer), the rain-bedraggled Mary insists on seeing Sam, and pushes ahead, to tell Sam, “I need a dress.”

We can see that they have a history, and some of it will be revealed over the course of what is essentially the two of them verbally sparring for the rest of the film, one of those screenplays where every line is supposed to have a deeper meaning conveyed by the way it is delivered rather than by the words that are said. This means references to walls and doors that even the characters can’t decide whether they are literal or metaphor. The metaphors , including measuring Mary, some self-injury, and something between a ghost and a demonic possession are heavy-handed and not as meaningful as they intend to be. Either way, it’s more whiny than illuminating.

The posters say, “This is not a ghost story. This is not a love story.” But it is both, or at least trying to be. There are hints that the relationship between Mary and Sam may have been romantic. It was certainly an extremely close connection, as they worked together in the early days to create the Mother Mary persona. Sam was abandoned, and given no credit for her contributions.

Mary and Sam go back and forth, their conversation shifts from brittle jibes, with Sam insisting on a better quality of apology, and hopelessness, with Mary unable to say anything more about the dress she rejected other than “it isn’t me.” She cannot say what “me” is or should be. Sam tells Mary to perform the song she plans to perform in the dress she is asking for — without the music. Hathaway throws herself into this silent performance and throws herself around a bit, too.

It gets more theatrical, a flashback scene taking place through the doorway of the very iG-friendly barn-like atelier. The production and sound design deserve special note, with the crispness of the sewing shears and the tactile fabrics making a strong impression. But when paranormal themes come in, the storyline becomes as bedraggled as the storm-tossed title character.

Parents should know that this movie includes disturbing material, including graphic wounds, some self-inflicted. There are tense emotional confrontations with strong language and references to abusive behavior and a scary seance. A character takes pills.

Family discussion: Does Mother Mary remind you of any real-life pop stars? Why did she abandon Sam? Why did she come back? Should Sam accept her apology?

If you like this, try: “Vox Lux” and concert films/documentaries from Selena Gomez, Madonna, Billie Eilish, and Taylor Swift