That combination works surprisingly well.

There is a Spielberg-like sense of emotion beneath the science-fiction spectacle and growing dread. Mitchell lets the film breathe enough for its characters to establish themselves before things start going horribly wrong. At the same time, nobody will mistake this for Mitchell suddenly becoming restrained. His camera still has that wonderfully uneasy quality, dwelling just long enough to make you wonder if something important is hiding in the frame. When the movie gets nasty, Mitchell’s fondness for gore comes through clearly. The result feels like a strange collision between classic blockbuster filmmaking and a much meaner genre movie.

What really keeps The End of Oak Street moving is how unpredictable it becomes. The basic setup might make you believe you know the kind of science-fiction thriller you are watching. Mitchell seems aware of those expectations and spends much of the movie setting them up so he can knock them down. Several moments take sharp turns into territory I wasn’t expecting. For better or worse, that willingness to get weird gives it an energy many polished studio sci-fi films lack.

David Robert Mitchell channels Spielberg in The End of Oak Street, a bloody sci-fi thriller packed with surprises and made for a rowdy theater crowd.

It is also funnier than its grim circumstances suggest. The humor doesn’t turn the movie into a comedy, thankfully, but brief moments of silliness and well-timed reactions keep the doom and gloom from becoming exhausting. More importantly, those laughs make the darker moments hit harder.

Sometimes the movie feels like it is testing how far it can push the expectations of this kind of thriller. Not all swings will land equally for everyone, though. Yet, I would rather watch Mitchell (or any other director) take those swings than not at all. And if possible, see this one with a crowd.

Overall, The End of Oak Street feels designed for that communal theater experience: the nervous laughter, the sudden gasps, the occasional horrified yell, and those wonderful moments when an entire auditorium realizes, almost exactly at the same time, that something terrible is about to happen. Mitchell has made a sci-fi thriller with plenty of tension and gore, but also heart, humor, and a cheeky desire to keep pulling the rug out from underneath you. That unpredictability is exactly what makes it such a blast.

Rating: 3.5/5 atoms

The End of Oak Street hits theaters on August 14th.

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Farva (Kevin Heffernan) is getting married to Sarita (Hannah Simone), the sister of Thorny (Jay Chandrasekhar). Thorny isn’t happy about this, and he’ll do whatever it takes to stop the wedding. The cast includes the return of Brian Cox and newcomer Chace Crawford, in the third film filled with irreverent humor.

One Star Wars joke had Broken Lizard thinking whether it would make the cut.

“Without giving it away, we ran that by test audiences when we did screenings, and a lot of people expressed the feeling they had when they first saw it,” Kevin Heffernan tells Nerd Reactor. “They’re like, ‘Oh, these guys maybe jump the shark here on this one,’ and then they end up loving it. It really plays in a very funny way, and I think people really bought into it. That was getting very big laughs in our test screening, so it really worked out pretty well.”

Brian Cox is a legendary actor with credits including X2: X-Men United, Troy, and Succession. In Super Troopers 3, he reprises his role as Captain O’Hagan, only this time, he’s “retired.”

“Between two and three, he did Succession,” Heffernan explained. “I think it’s one of his most iconic roles now, right? Where he’s Logan Roy. And it had a different feel for him when he came back. He was always our gravitas guy. He was always the guy that gave us a little bit of depth, and then now he’s back after playing this great role, and he leans into it, which is fun.

“He’s the guy who walks in and is like, ‘All right, **** off, everyone,’ and then you get down to business. We weren’t really sure how it was gonna work out, but when he came back, I think he just had a blast going back to this silly comedy stuff, doing something a little different than Logan Roy, which is great.”

Fans of The Boys will recognize Chace Crawford, who portrays Baker Buchanan in Super Troopers 3. And like his character, The Deep, he continues to carry the aura of a self-absorbed narcissist as Baker.

“[Chace Crawford] was our first choice for that part,” Heffernan said. “We’re such fans of The Deep and The Boys. I think the guy is the funniest thing in that show. He’s so funny. And we were like, ‘Let’s see if we can get him.’ I didn’t think we could get him, and then it turned out he was a huge Super Troopers fan, and he was as excited to be there as we were to have him. So it ended up being a great experience having Chace there.”

About Super Troopers 3

Synopsis: When Farva’s wildly over-the-top Indian engagement to Thorny’s sister spirals into chaos, the Super Troopers must navigate Thorny’s schemes to break up the relationship, while trying to crack a pernicious new drug ring — all to save the day and maybe the wedding itself.

The film is directed by Jay Chandrasekhar and written by Broken Lizard.

The cast includes Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, Erik Stolhanske, Brian Cox, Marisa Coughlan, Nat Faxon, Chace Crawford, Andrew Dismukes, Hannah Simone, Iqbal Theba, Sakina Jaffrey, Jon Rudnitsky, and Lisa Gilroy.

Super Troopers 3 releases in theaters on August 7, 2026.

The post Broken Lizard on Super Troopers 3 Star Wars Joke, Brian Cox’s Return & Chace Crawford’s Casting appeared first on Nerd Reactor.

The cast features an eclectic mix of actors, especially if you’re a fan of J-pop boy bands or classic yakuza movies. Daisuke Sakuma, best known as a member of Snow Man, plays Daiya with an easygoing charm that makes him instantly likable. Yuta Nakamoto of NCT 127 brings a cooler, more guarded energy to Kiryu. Neither performer is just there to attract music fans. Their experience as idols helps during the dance sequences, and both understand the film’s playful rhythm and know when to let the veteran actors steal a scene.

And steal scenes they do. Kippei Shiina, Renji Ishibashi, and Hitoshi Ozawa have spent years playing tough guys, gangsters, or authority figures. So, it’s a delight to watch them parody these roles. They still carry themselves like people who command the screen, then they’re asked to dance. The contrast stays funny, especially because Uchida treats their frustration with just enough sincerity.

With clever casting, energetic choreography, and memorable brawls, The Specials transforms a ridiculous premise into crowd-pleasing entertainment.

The premise also gives the film room to explore emotionally guarded outsiders who don’t know how to work as a team. Their rehearsals become awkward, quasi-group therapy, and Urara adds warmth without making the story sentimental. Yuzuki Hirakawa brings a welcome presence to a film otherwise crowded with psychologically damaged men. By the time the team performs their routine, the retro soundtrack and choreography become more than punchlines. You want them to win the whole competition.

Despite being a playful parody of yakuza films, The Specials has a surprising number of fantastic action sequences. The film mixes clean choreography with flashes of genuine brutality, and Yohei Tateishi’s cinematography gives the daytime comedy a polished brightness before shifting into grimier textures whenever the fists come out.

Overall, The Specials is a film that seamlessly blends comedy out of dance-floor antics and underworld chaos. Better still, its warmth never dulls the danger or makes the characters untouchable. The Specials takes that basic appeal and scales it into a crowd-pleasing ensemble piece. It’s silly, stylish, heartfelt, and far more effective than a movie about dancing hitmen has any right to be.

Rating: 4/5 atoms

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At the center sits Eiji Tsuburaya. The documentary repeatedly returns to the punishing labor behind the original’s production: miniature cities, creature suits, optical effects, detailed designs, and weekly television deadlines that called for movie-scale imagination at an unforgiving pace. Archival footage from the shoots and clips from iconic episodes reveal the handmade ingenuity involved. By the end, The Origin of Ultraman feels as much like a tribute to Tsuburaya—the “Father of Tokusatsu”—as it does to Ultraman himself.

Still, anyone expecting a chronological account covering every Ultra hero, production shift, or major era will leave with gaps. Directors Yu Nakamura and Kazutaka Yoshida are more interested in passion than documentation, and it’s easy to see why. Their interview lineup is remarkable: Guillermo del Toro, Hideo Kojima, Hideaki Anno, Hirokazu Koreeda, and Nicolas Winding Refn—just to name a few. Together, they approach Ultraman as a mythology, childhood memory, religious symbol, design object, and creative trigger.

The interviews are terrific because every interviewee openly talks about how much they love the character. Refn discusses Ultraman with pure excitement, like a kid talking about firetrucks, while Kojima describes believing in Ultraman almost as one might believe in God. That kind of enthusiasm becomes infectious.

The Origin of Ultraman honors Eiji Tsuburaya and six decades of tokusatsu history through archival footage and deeply personal interviews.

The conversations become even richer when they move beyond nostalgia. Del Toro and Koreeda compare Catholic and East Asian religious traditions while discussing why they believe Ultraman connected so strongly with audiences in Mexico but never became equally embedded in the United States. Original Ultra Q and Ultraman star Hiroko Sakurai gives a more intimate connection to the people who built the phenomenon. Taken together, these perspectives turn the documentary into something larger than franchise promotion, and it becomes an exploration of how popular art travels, changes meaning, and settles into people’s inner lives.

Unfortunately, the filmmaking rarely equals the quality of its material. This is an official Tsuburaya production distributed by TOHO NEXT and Tsuburaya Productions, yet it often looks strangely amateurish. Onscreen text changes style and position without much logic. Names can be difficult to locate, subtitles occasionally compete with other graphics, and transitions between speakers feel clunky. Classic footage and archival material are welcome, but clips sometimes begin or end at awkward points, interrupting thoughts rather than extending them. The problem is not a lack of access. It’s a lack of polish.

That becomes frustrating because the raw material is so strong. A cleaner edit could have created a sweeping cultural history worthy of the anniversary. Instead, the production occasionally resembles an excellent collection of bonus features assembled without enough attention to rhythm. Even so, the film’s affection shines through, and the images, memories, and thoughtful comments help explain why Ultraman has lasted so long.

Overall, The Origin of Ultraman might not be the ultimate documentary as its official label suggests. Still, it does capture something special: the joy on someone’s face when an old hero makes them feel like a child again.

Rating: 3/5 atoms

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The story centers on Madoka, a playwright who sits down to watch a movie about Kazuma, a musician. Inside that movie, Kazuma goes to see a film about Madoka. Before long, they find themselves looking at each other through the screen, sharing different stories but the same movie world. When they start talking across this divide, their films go off script, and that is when You Are the Film becomes most enjoyable.

Even though the story might seem complicated, Ueda makes the rules easy to follow. He doesn’t spend much time explaining things. Instead, he sets up the idea quickly and trusts viewers to follow along. At just 68 minutes, the film moves quickly through a theater and a nearby shopping area, making the most of its small budget.

Makoto Ueda’s You Are the Film blends science fiction, comedy, and heartfelt drama into a fast, wildly inventive celebration of cinema.

The film’s small scale actually helps it. Unlike Ueda’s earlier, more complex scripts, You Are the Film feels personal and crafted with care. The theater is filled with posters and nods to his past work, but the love for movies goes beyond these details. Madoka and Kazuma both come hoping to escape tough moments in their lives, and the movies instead push them to see their problems differently.

Ueda makes sure the science-fiction idea never overshadows the film’s emotional core. Madoka and Kazuma come first, before any clever plot devices. Each of them can see something in the other’s life that the person themselves can’t. This turns the movie’s main trick into a unique way of showing why it’s important to accept help. We aren’t just lone heroes who have to fix everything by ourselves. Sometimes, we need someone else to spot the answer for us.

However, not every idea gets enough time to grow. The short length is refreshing, but it means some parts of the story feel sketched out instead of fully explored. Sometimes, the film’s simple style makes it feel like a student project or a proof of concept to build upon later. Compared to River or Rewrite, it’s less impressive in how it’s made and doesn’t hit as hard emotionally.

Overall, You Are the Film is a smart, warm, and delightfully odd first feature that knows experiments should be enjoyable, not just impressive. It explores what movies can do and uses that sense of fun to make a clear point. Stories might keep us stuck in the same roles, but someone else can help us change what happens next.

Rating: 4/5 atoms

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The setup follows Suzuki, a seemingly pathetic drunken vagrant, who is brought in for questioning. After using his (supposedly) psychic abilities to predict tragedies, he becomes linked to a series of bombings across Tokyo. Most of the film unfolds inside a cramped interrogation room, where officers try to determine whether Suzuki is a legitimate psychic or the person behind these bombings.

That might sound boring on paper, but Jiro Sato is the reason it works. His performance begins so understated that Suzuki almost seems harmless. Then, little by little, the mask slips. Before long, the man who looked barely capable of standing begins studying the shadowy aspects of everyone around him. Sato moves between desperation, smug amusement, wounded pride, and genuine menace so easily that it becomes difficult to tell where the performance ends and Suzuki’s manipulation begins.

Suzuki=Bakudan transforms a largely static interrogation into a white-knuckle thriller filled with manipulation, uncertainty, and escalating chaos.

The film contrasts these mostly static interrogations with the frantic movement of Tokyo outside. Police race through crowded city areas as the bomb threat expands, while the two officers who arrested Suzuki begin their own investigation. These scenes provide a welcome release from the interrogation room, yet never reduce the pressure. Instead, every cut back to Suzuki feels like returning to the source of these problems.

What begins as a contained mystery steadily snowballs. As the stakes rise, Suzuki’s riddles become harder to solve. He may be a psychic or a terrorist, and the film understands that explaining him too neatly would make him less frightening.

There is a guilty pleasure in watching a truly magnetic villain—or possible villain—operate. Characters like Suzuki embody impulses most people would never voice, frustrations that civilized society demands we bury. He exposes those feelings in others and appears delighted by what he finds. That makes him more than a puzzle for the police to solve. He’s a mirror they would rather smash.

Overall, Suzuki=Bakudan is a white-knuckle psychological thriller that’s intimate and explosive at the same time. It’s held together by Jiro Sato’s fearless performance and the unnerving possibility that the most dangerous bomb in Tokyo may be the most confident person in an interrogation room.

Rating: 4/5 atoms

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At the center is Lord Murashige Araki. A real figure from 16th-century Japan, Murashige has broken with the powerful warlord Nobunaga Oda and sealed himself inside his fortress. His authority appears absolute, but that image begins to shatter when a series of strange crimes occur that suggest someone or some people inside the castle are working against him.

Murashige turns to Kanbei Kuroda, a brilliant strategist held prisoner beneath the fortress. Masaki Suda plays Kanbei with lively, mischievous energy. His conversations with Murashige contrast sharply with Murashige’s heavy stillness. Kanbei rarely offers direct answers. Instead, he gives riddles, questions, and inconvenient observations. The setup resembles The Silence of the Lambs more than a conventional war film: a powerful man repeatedly descending into confinement to get advice from someone he cannot fully trust to solve a mystery.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner trades swordplay for psychological warfare in a tense, intelligent tale of power and deception.

The story unfolds across four chapters, each bringing a fresh mystery for Murashige to solve. Kurosawa patiently builds paranoia, letting glances, rumors, and partial conversations carry as much danger as Nobunaga Oda’s incoming forces. This framework gives the film an engaging rhythm at first. Unfortunately, the deliberate pace and repetitive chapters become sluggish after a while.

Thankfully, the film is gorgeous. Kurosawa carefully arranges interiors and striking outdoor compositions that make the castle feel both majestic and oppressive. There are also large-scale images of armored men assembled across the landscape.

As Lord Murashige Araki, Masahiro Motoki plays him with commanding restraint. His Murashige has unquestionable authority yet an unexpected approachability, expressing the character’s pacifist instincts. When his stoicism slips under pressure, brief flashes of anxiety and irritation hit hard. Suda is more openly expressive, and his warmth makes it easy to see why even his keeper begins forming an odd connection with him.

Overall, uneven pacing aside, The Samurai and the Prisoner is an intelligent, beautiful film with spectacular performances by Motoki and Suda. Once you realize the film is not about history’s grand events so much as the people forced to interpret them from incomplete evidence, then you’ll begin to appreciate what Kiyoshi Kurosawa is building.

Rating: 4/5 atoms

The Samurai and the Prisoner hits theaters on July 31st.

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Instead of turning the film into a non-stop fight extravaganza, the movie focuses more on character development. That makes sense, since Haruka Sakura’s journey functions as the heart and soul of the Shishitoren Arc. The film wants viewers to care about his evolution and the relationships around him. Still, the emotional growth never really gets enough time to feel natural.

The film tries to fit the anime’s first season, about four manga volumes, into one two-hour movie, which is a lot. Sakura starts as a tough loner who thinks strength is all that matters, but he slowly learns to trust others. In the movie, this change feels more like jumping from one step to the next than a steady journey. There are some touching scenes, and a few real moments stand out, but everything feels rushed. Before those moments can really sink in, the movie moves on.

The Wind Breaker live-action adaptation captures the series’ heart and attitude, but rushed character development and uneven fights hold it back.

Sadly, this rushed pace also affects the action. The fights are okay, but they don’t have the same energy or style as the anime. Because the movie focuses more on character moments, the fight scenes often just connect the emotional beats rather than wow audiences. For a story that’s all about street fights, that’s a big loss.

The cast does a decent job. Most main characters look a lot like their manga versions, but that accuracy can be distracting in live action. Some hairstyles, expressions, and costumes work on the page but look a bit odd on real people. That over-the-top style also leads to some exaggerated acting. It’s not terrible, and sometimes the big performances are fun, but overall the acting is uneven.

Overall, the live-action adaptation keeps enough of Wind Breaker’s charm to be enjoyable. The story is full of hardened characters who care more about protecting others than getting stronger. It’s what sets Wind Breaker apart from other battle shonen stories. Even so, while the film might fail to match the anime’s action or pacing, it gets that the series is really about Sakura’s journey.

Rating: 3/5 atoms

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The story is straightforward: a huge tree stands at the edge of a cemetery and is cursed so that anyone who touches it and makes a wish is cursed. A group of university students does just that. After one of them disappears, the surviving students give different accounts of what happened, and the plot starts to twist and turn.

Masahiro Yamaura’s screenplay, based on Sesuji’s novella A Questionnaire About the Mouth, creates a supernatural mystery using testimony, contradictions, and manipulation. From there, the meaning of the title becomes much darker than you might think. The “mouths” are people whose stories have been twisted by jealousy, fear, and malice. In typical Shimizu fashion, many events are not what they first seem.

Takashi Shimizu’s The Mouths blends familiar J-horror imagery with sinister twists and atmosphere, and scares that linger after the credits.

Shimizu’s knack for visual dread is on full display right off the bat. He makes the cemetery feel scary even before anything supernatural takes place. Darkness fills the area, and the loud buzz of cicadas heightens the tension. The Mouths uses many familiar J-horror visual tropes: pale women, long black hair, stiff faces, and victims with wide, terrified eyes. Fans of Japanese ghost stories will recognize these visuals right away.

Still, Shimizu knows how to use these elements well. His scares don’t rely on sudden shocks. Instead, he quietly puts something disturbing in the scene and lets you spot it just a moment too late. The hanging corpses that show up again and again are the best example. They appear quietly in the background, silent and unnervingly still.

Overall, The Mouths sometimes relies too heavily on genre tropes, but its best scares show why Shimizu is still a tremendous filmmaker. He understands that fear comes from looking again at a doorway, a rearview mirror, or a dark spot behind someone and realizing what you hoped wasn’t there has been watching you the whole time, never blinking. That is what makes the ending linger long after the credits roll.

Rating: 4/5 atoms

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Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the most emotional Spider-Man movie yet. And yes, fans finally get the “miserable Spider-Man” they have been asking for. Peter is isolated, exhausted, and clearly aching to reconnect with the people he left behind. The important part, though, is that he understands why he cannot. He misses his friends, but he is willing to accept that loneliness if it keeps them safe. That choice gives Tom Holland some of his best material in the role. Holland has always been good at letting Peter’s emotions slip through even when the character is trying to hide them, and here, every pause, awkward smile, and tired glance has impact.

Brand New Day is also busy. Very busy. The trailers have not been misleading. Several characters, conflicts, and moving pieces fight for attention. The movie sometimes feels like it is sprinting between them before one has fully settled. Some storylines take priority, while others feel added mainly because the plot needs Peter in a certain place or emotional state. One thread receives a surprising amount of screen time without delivering the payoff it promises. It contributes to Peter’s growth but ultimately feels more disposable than important.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day delivers Tom Holland’s most emotional Spider-Man story yet, combining Peter Parker’s lonely new life with spectacular action.

However, that bit of criticism doesn’t apply to Sadie Sink’s character. Without revealing who she plays, her story becomes one of the film’s emotional anchors. She and Peter are carrying different versions of the same pain, and the way their arcs overlap gives the movie its humanity. They are the co-heart and soul of the film. Not to mention, it allows Peter to connect with someone without undoing the sacrifice that brought him here.

The other standout pairing is Spider-Man and The Punisher. Jon Bernthal and Holland clearly enjoy working together. Their relationship has a strange odd-couple style. Peter talks, Frank threatens, and Peter keeps talking anyway. Their moral compasses couldn’t be more different. Yet the movie knows how funny it is to put these two personalities in the same room.

Then there is the action. The stunt work, handled with help from Jackie Chan’s stunt team, is spectacular. The fights are physical, creative and often surprisingly rough, with Spider-Man moving like someone who has become smarter and more experienced without becoming invincible.

Overall, Spider-Man: Brand New Day is messy in places, but its emotional core holds. More importantly, it lets Peter Parker grow up without losing the compassion that makes him Spider-Man. Between Shang-Chi, Wonder Man, and Brand New Day, Destin Daniel Cretton is a director who touches gold in every Marvel project he’s involved with.

Rating: 4.5/5 atoms

Spider-Man: Brand New Day hits theaters on July 31st.

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