Always Good Movies

Direction: Edgar Wright
Country: UK

British filmmaker Edgar Wright, who made his name with cult favorites such as Shaun of the Dead (2004), Hot Fuzz (2007), and Baby Driver (2017), returns with The Running Man, an effusive sci-fi action thriller based on Stephen King’s novel and adapted for the screen for a second time, following Paul Michael Glaser’s 1987 version. Glen Powell takes over Schwarzenegger's role in this weakened satire, which plays less like a cautionary dystopia and more like a garish circus broadcast in real time.

Powell stars as Ben Richards, an honest yet volatile man caught in a family crisis, recently fired for insubordination and deeply distrustful of the system and its rules. Desperate, he signs up for the wildly popular TV show The Running Man, a dangerous, often barbaric, technology-manipulated game of survival run by sadistic producer Dan Killian (Josh Brolin).

Although it gestures toward revolution and rebellion, The Running Man never feels grounded or serious, instead pushing forced ideas and piling on far-fetched action sequences. It can be mildly entertaining in spurts, yet it feels as artificial as the fictional program it depicts, constantly echoing better films without forging a strong identity of its own. Don’t let the hype mislead you: this is a slick pretender, driven by formulaic plotting and an aggressive posture, unable to connect its excesses to anything resembling a plausible reality.

Burdened by what feels like heavy post-production interference, the film struggles to find a stable rhythm, repeatedly tripping over its own noisy boom-crash-bang theatrics and a shaky script. Had Wright opted for greater simplicity and fewer preposterous action set pieces, the result might have been a leaner, more coherent spectacle. As it stands, The Running Man is cluttered with loose ends and strained credibility. Check out for yourself and see if you can forgive its flaws.

Direction: Rian Johnson
Country: UK

Wake Up Dead Man, the third installment of the Knives Out franchise, is a sporadically watchable whodunit assembled without much brilliance. Here you’ll find a tenacious religious cult of personality, heavy confessions, an insoluble murder mystery, ghostly apparitions, and mystical insinuations. Yet the film is not nearly as clever as it believes itself to be. Written, directed, and co-produced by Rian Johnson (Looper, 2012; Star Wars: The Last Jedi, 2017), who also signed the previous two entries (2019 and 2022), it feels increasingly mannered and self-satisfied.

Artificial and predictable, the film is a collage of cheap schemes and contrived plotting revolving around guilt-ridden Father Jud (Josh O’Connor), a former boxer turned Catholic priest assigned to a rural parish in upstate New York. There, Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin)—a provocateur and opportunist who thrives on a cult of personality—presides over a congregation of fanatical, ambitious followers, whose simmering tensions gradually come to the surface. When a gruesome crime occurs inside the church, only the famed private detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), operating with his trademark relaxed yet sharply observant demeanor, appears capable of untangling the mystery.

Despite a stellar cast and an abundance of secrets waiting to be unearthed, the story never truly coheres, creeping forward in a disorienting manner that suggests narrative confusion rather than deliberate complexity. The mystery itself proves more bland than intriguing, and by the time the case reaches its conclusion, it feels more undaunting than haunting. Wake Up Dead Man ultimately takes the shape of a hollow parody—a loud, overcooked puzzle that favors spectacle over substance. Sadly, beyond its wackiness, few of its moments are sharp or amusing enough to earn even a fleeting smile.