By Any Means 2026 * * Stars

WHACK JOB

"Time for you to leave my shop." Uh, don't say stuff like that to Marky Mark's Gregory Scarpa. He'll bust you up bro. Believe that.

So OK, an FBI agent and a hit man join forces to solve some civil rights killings in counterculture era Mississippi. That's the gist of By Any Means, a crime thriller that tries to be so tough yet it has a little too much bark and not quite enough bite. "We'll be working together." Um, true dat boss. True dat.

Anyway "Means" is like 48 Hrs. meets 2018's Green Book, a sort of buddy/buddy cop movie where there's an excursion, a slight rode trip, some racial implications, and plenty of intense tiffing along the way. By Any Means, yeah it stars Mark Wahlberg (mentioned earlier), Yahya Abdul-Mateen, and Nicole Beharie. Wahlberg, well he's always been a solid actor but here seems to be playing a dude that's mobbed up to the nth degree. I mean it almost feels like he's parodying and/or sending-up the notion of nasty hoods as opposed to giving an actual performance. "I knock some heads around and I crack the case." Easy there Sergeant Sean Dignam. Easy there big guy.

Eddie Murphy vehicles and syndicates aside, By Any Means is tight, full of payoffs, and well-paced, a rather terse pic that's based on a true story (and said true story might be a little skewed). The downfall of "Means" however is what it represents, a rinse, repeat of interrogations, beatings, and combative fight sequences that seem to echo early Quentin Tarantino ("you hear that?" hint, hint). It also doesn't help that By Any Means has that aesthetic that makes it feel like it's made-for-TV fodder, not the type of swipe you'd see at a multiplex. "A means to a little end." 

Written by Jesse Burleson

"Untold" The Testimony of Vince Young 2026 * * * Stars

FOREVER YOUNG

"Vince was a freaking animal man." Yup, they're talking about Vincent Paul Young Jr., a BCS national football champion, Madden cover boy, and now special assistant for those Texas Longhorns ("hook 'em"). Hey Arch Manning, Jonah Williams, and "Sark" are the future while this dude Vince was the past.

Anyway "Untold" The Testimony of Vince Young is a yardstick Netflix documentary, at times whimsical and fancy-free and two-sided while other times dark and totally mano a mano. "Untold", well it rounds out to 78 minutes as director John Henion invites strife while chronicling Young's career as a QB via college and the pros. Vince, yeah he was a rather racked soul and defensive cat (pun intended), acting as the so-called protagonist in this docu while his defunct NFL coach Jeff Fisher (of the Tennessee Titans) acts as the so-called antagonist (and rather spiteful one at that). "Who wants it more." Yeah you tell 'em Young. Rock on mister 6'5" with two fingers in the air.

So OK, "Untold" The Testimony of Vince Young features Vince being interviewed as if to say we haven't seen him forever, he's a little rattled, and maybe he needs the dough from these proceedings (the guy filed for bankruptcy after making $34 mil during his career plus endorsements). A recent archive here, a sighting of Matthew McConaughey (fellow Longhorns monger), some obscure sportswriter putting their two cents in, Mack Brown praising Vince Young while Fish lights him up like an LED party favor. Yes "Untold" can't help but leave the viewer with a bad taste in their mouths over the second chapter of Young's double-hearted vocation. I suppose that makes it more effective than most accounts about star athletes who can fling the rock, change an audible, and/or mow down a defensive front. "Testify that." 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Tony 2026 * * * Stars

TONE LOCO

"You know I can cook too." Yeah you can big dog. You're Anthony freaking Bourdain, bad boy host with the most. And until this movie about your life circa 1975, I've only known you as the dude from TV's Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and some other Travel Channel swipe. Yup, "Reservations" is that show where you visit various places around the world as you explore local culture and cuisine while hobnobbing with well-known foodies and denizens. Natch. 

Anyway 2026's Tony does involve food and the Tony in question is of course Bourdain, a down-to-earth guy who committed suicide by way of hanging just 8 years ago. In Tony you have a soil-like sense of time and place (mid 70s), a raw and unflinching performance by Dominic Sessa (he plays the title character mind you), and a mini snapshot of someone's being, a stumbling into chef's lore when all you wanted to be was a fellowship writer. "Are you a good guy or a bad guy." Oh absotively boss. Absotively. 

So yeah, as a flick about Bourdain's fantastic summer where he chain-smoked and drank, learned about the world of restaurants, clam shucked, and educated himself on how to become a full-fledged, culinary artist, Tony is akin to stuff like The Tender Bar and Hot Summer Nights and 2018's Summer Days, Summer Nights, vehicles where coming-of-age, female crushes, and Aestival lovin get their veritable rage on. 

Keep in mind however that Tony is biographical, not some farcical farce about horndog teens, jamming to Mungo Jerry, and/or chronicling turbulent, fictional personas. No this pic is stronger than most memoir mantras because it steers clear of many wiki tropes and tired motifs (are you listening Peter Landesman?). Tony co-stars Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones, and Leo Woodall and they all lend adequate support. "Tony twist."

Written by Jesse Burleson

The End of Oak Street 2026 * * * Stars

UPPER END

It was 1993 and I was just out of high school, going to a packed house to see Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs were pretty nasty in "Park" and well, they're even nastier in The End of Oak Street (my latest review). "Oak Street", yeah it takes place in Michigan until Michigan starts to look like some prehistoric landscape from millions of years ago. "We can't leave." Uh, you got that right chief. You sure got that right.

Reflecting on theropod vehicles of the past and near present, The End of Oak Street is definitely a retread, having denizens run for their lives in order to not get swallowed up by T. rex and its merry meat-eaters. The runtime is a tight 100 minutes, the soundtrack by Michael Giacchino has a certain Afterschool Special residue to it, the setting is 1982, and the old school zoom shots by helmer David Robert Mitchell will have you saying "tubular" before you even know it. "I think our neighborhood and whole street has moved." Yikes. 

So OK, "Oak Street" has solid casting in the forms of Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor and the critics (including this one) have been pretty positive in their nostalgic assessments. Despite a rather pat ending and some cliched tyke characters, The End of Oak Street is still a thrill ride that never lets up, a kind of Spielbergian, Super 8 hybrid that's so suburbia acute you might actually question its PG-13 rating (I initially thought it was a borderline R). I mean if you ignore the fact that "Oak Street" came out in the dog days of summer and it just had to compete with Hathaway's other pic, the massive blockbuster The Odyssey, you'll find a succinct surprise here, a sci-fi wormhole-r that Robert Zemeckis would have made in between Back to the Future and that movie about a rascally rabbit (you know which one I'm talking about). Fleet "street". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

The Last House 2026 * * 1/2 Stars

LAST WORDS

Louis Leterrier (The Takedown, Grimsby, Now You See Me) directs 2026's The Last House. And oh yeah, he did the last Fast & Furious flick (Fast X). With "House", Leterrier takes a fetching premise (being ensnared) and runs with it, blurring the lines between fast-cutting dramedy, sitcom folly, and polarizing, sci-fi horror. His look is purple and prismatic. His zoom shots are zooming. "But we are safe." You think so chief? You really think so?

The Last House, yeah it's a cinematic marathon not a sprint, a 110-minute vehicle with kvetching characters and a thin diegesis that seems stretched out to 3 hours. Torrential rain and sealed up doors and food rationing and aliens oh my! "Go wait in the car." As if we could my optimistic moviegoer. As if we could.

Starring the likes of Greta Lee, Emma Ho, and Wagner Moura and taking place in Seattle, Washington (but shot in England, huh?), "House" chronicles a family of four, confined to their home with no way out. Unlock the doors? Fat chance. Break through the windows? Yeah right. Go through the chimney? Said family could but decide not to. Drive the car through the garage door? Uh, only if you want to get a concussion. Go through the underground sewers? Um, yikers. 

With The Last House, you have to imagine 2007's The Mist without the events taking place in a grocery store or 2021's Girl in the Basement without you know, a basement or last year's Brick but not involving some government-conspired wall. Did you get all that? Good. So OK, watch "House" to see how it concludes but know that certain parts of it are zapped of dramatic momentum. The pic, well it feels like something Alex Garland would make if he was in between cosmic projects on the low. Stone "house". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

A Toxic Love Story 2026 * * 1/2 Stars

TOXIC AVENGERS

"A jealous wife, romantic rivals, blackmail." Yikes. All that's missing is Geraldo Rivera, a camera crew, and some scammers on the low. Oh and don't forget about that polygraph device to keep in handy. Like I said, yikers. 

Anyway my latest review is 2026's A Toxic Love Story, a documentary that despite being a real true-life affair, still unfolds like pure fiction. I mean was Angela Diaz (one of the film's subjects) actually pregnant with twins? And did Angela really fake being diagnosed with cancer? And uh, why are the other denizens involved with "Toxic" so darn thin-skinned? It's not like anyone got murdered and um, no one's bank account was woefully drained. Yeesh!

A Toxic Love Story, well it's a melodramatic enigma, a "cry for help" docu where the town criers spew profanity and painfully gnaw on their 15 minutes of fame. Guy meets girl. Guy dumps girl for another girl. Guy with new girl conspires to put ex-girl in jail through the use of fake emails and/or rape fantasy hoaxes. Did you get all that? Well that's the point to "Toxic", the ultimate bamboozle of a vehicle, the ultimate catfish-er, the ultimate ploy for a viewer to get there total Ricki Lake on. "I wish everyone would just tell the truth." You're preaching to the choir sister. Preach darn it.

Expired, daytime talk show hosts and forgotten media notices aside, A Toxic Love Story is directed by Alexandra Lacey, a twenty-year veteran of TV and Netflix celluloid. Her flick develops quite nicely even if the subject matter is trivial and the jibber jabber during the interviews is trainwreck city. Basically if you want to see a docudrama where the 48 Hours cliche of knowing who the malefactor is because you never hear (or see) present-day accounts from said malefactor, well "Toxic" is that docudrama. Somewhat tainted "love". 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Do Not Enter 2026 * * Stars

ENTER THE VOID

"Sounds dangerous." So quips Diane, an attractive, pseudo victim persona in 2026's Do Not Enter. If only Diane knew what the heck she was getting into. Rats and falling chandeliers and hanging cellphones oh my!

So yeah, I read somewhere on the Internet that Marc Klasfeld (director of Do Not Enter) has only done music videos and this is his feature film debut. It kind of shows. I mean why does main character Rick (played by Jake Manley) get shot putted from a 10-story building only to recover unscathed? And why can't we just let the whole social media rubbish go (live-streaming, YouTube, video content, etc.)? And uh, what's up with the Crawlers showing their ugly mugs again like it's 2005? Yikes.

Anyway Do Not Enter is part horror and part thriller, with not a whole lot of either to come by. The runtime is 91 minutes, with most of those minutes taking place in some haunted hotel in New Jorsey (or New Jersey, I just wanted to write the former). I mean you'd be better off watching Don't Breathe or mid-2000s The Descent, two flicks that Do Not Enter painfully resembles. At least the continuity would be tighter, the editing wouldn't be so irregular, the dialogue wouldn't be so trite, and the ending wouldn't be so darn elated (and live fed of course). 

Helmed by a rookie (Klasfeld mentioned earlier), distributed by Lionsgate (the same people that brought you The Blair Witch Project), and made on a budget of $7 mil ($6 mil more than Blair Witch, that's inflation people), Do Not Enter is about thrill-seeking groups, lots of stashed cash, the supernatural, and ghostly inns. The vehicle despite a few creepy, sanguinary images, fails to shake you as a viewer unless of course you've never seen an independent grindhouse sprucer before. "Do not" look any further. 

Written by Jesse Burleson

Desire 2026 * * Stars

ARDOR FREE

A slightly noir-like film that feels like an artsy version of a recent Lifetime endeavor. Yeah I'm talking about 2026's Desire or in Spanish terms, Deseo. Desire, well it's a product of Netflix, with some poor dubbing, some attractive leads, and a couple pseudo, steamy love scenes. So, do swim coaches really go from being Olympians in training to mentoring teenage girls at some random pool? And what exactly does Lucero's character's husband do for a living besides checking surveillance cameras at said pool? And uh, what's up with Lucero's geeky son, looking like an extra from 2014's Not Cool and blaring Linkin Park-style music through his headphones all day? Yikes.

Anyway Desire is helmed by rookie Teresa Simone, a filmmaker who projects Desire like a glossy love letter to good old Mexico City. She uses fill lighting, not much novelty, and some interesting camera angles to secure her vision even if her vision is modern-day softcore porn straight from the annals of say, 1979. "You wanna tell me anything." I thought I just did chief. I thought I just did.  

Late 70s Caligula, CDMX tributes, and dark hues aside, Desire is well shot by Simone and the flick has a numbing, mysteriousness to it. I mean I could almost see a poor man's Oliver Martinez and a poor man's Diane Lane getting their total, Unfaithful on. The problem however is how Desire is edited (or not fully edited), making the viewer scratch his or her head over twists and turns that seem like convoluted, plot dead ends rather than effective plot threads. A Mexico-produced vehicle about a woman who cheats on her hubby with fallen pool boy only to dump said pool boy and then plan on offing the poor schlub. If Desire played it as a straight thriller like I just described, it probably would've held a little more water (pun intended). Burned out "desire."  

Written by Jesse Burleson

The Murder of Rachel Nickell 2026 * * Stars

EXECUTION NOT WARRANTED 

"Dadda, can you help me draw mummy on this piece of paper?" So says a two-year-old witness in The Murder of Rachel Nickell, a documentary that seems to want to dredge up something that happened almost 34 years ago. Um, let the victim's family be at peace will ya. And yeah, let's not now bother the dude that was falsely accused of Nickell's horrific passing via good old '92. Yeesh.

So OK, "Rachel Nickell" was directed by feature rookie Lucy Bowden, a woman who might have been swayed by Netflix's final, abrupt cutting. I mean why is the actual killer of Rachel revealed in the last five minutes on a whim? And why does little Alex Hanscombe now an adult (see first paragraph), suddenly show up in the last twenty minutes or so only to give very little insight into how his mum got stabbed 49 times a la broad daylight? And um, why was father Andre Hanscombe (Nickell's partner) so camcorder crazy that everything his fam did had to be so cataloged. Oh wait, it was the 90s. My bad. 

Bowden, well she gives The Murder of Rachel Nickell a sterile, streamlined look, interspersed with what seems like prepped interviews, grainy archives, and slight reenactments. The editing is yardstick, the musical score by Andrew Skeet is mildly stirring, and "Rachel Nickell" has gained enough reverence to the point where it has also been made into an actual TV series (with real actors). "I saw it... Yeah I saw it all." Not so fast boss. Not so fast. 

In closure, The Murder of Rachel Nickell fails however to be novel, or fresh, or anything other than humdrum existing. I mean it's like watching a combination of Dateline or 20/20 or even paranormal drama A Haunting, where instead of the camera readily peeking in we get something that's a little pat and/or smarmy. "Murder unincorporated."

Written by Jesse Burleson

Faces of Death 2026 * * * Stars

DEATH PROVED

It was 1978 and no one had seen the likes of something like Faces of Death. Um, just like no one had seen the likes of The Exorcist and/or Pink Flamingos (yikes). Despite a critic's ribbing and decent box office receipts, "Death" still gained cult status, showing footage of different ways humans could bite that proverbial dust. 48 years later we have a revamping of Faces of Death titled well, Faces of Death (naturally). People are still getting executed, the flick is still pseudo mondo, the budget is still nil, and the antagonist is still "killing for no apparent reason." "Flag it, and move on." As if we could boss. As if we could. 

Reflecting on various horror pics of the past and near present, Faces of Death (starring Barbie Ferreira and Dacre Montgomery) won't set the world on fire but it's perfectly passable as screenlife, snuff fodder. Beheading-s and shootings and home invasions and electrocutions oh my! "Death's" runtime is 105 minutes, the soundtrack reeks of John Harrison (that's a good thing), and unseasoned director Daniel Goldhaber thinks in cuts with his hyper-cutting giving Faces of Death a rather nimble pace. "Give the people what they want." Fo sho. Fo...sho.

So OK, don't go into "Death" thinking it's a documentary like '78's original version, with unknown actors and ultimately mealy footage. No Faces of Death is modern-day, only reverting back to the super-sounded 70s as a veritable springboard. I mean I've only seen the trailer of the first Faces of Death and there's no graininess here, just a sort of triple hybrid of Silence of the Lambs, Saw, and some Sam Raimi vestige on the low. Fairly well done, not as gory as I thought, saddled with building tension, and made for the millennial-s who like their Internet fabric spoon-fed to them. Flushed "faces."  

Written by Jesse Burleson