Mutiny (2026)

Whoa... TWO Stats in one year? Slow it down, Stath-Man. What is this, 2008?

And yet, looking at that poster, all I can think is Die Hard and "You sunk my battleship!" Luckily, the entire plot is spelled out for you, but even with an homage as cheeky as that, the film itself seems to lack any fun or sense of humor. This one is dull, slow and plodding, even by Stat standards. It's almost as if A.I. processed all of his filmography and spat out a convincing facsimile missing all of the heart. A Working Man is no longer the worst Statham joint.

½ a knife through the face out of 5

Mercy (2026)

Taking a page from the Minority Report pre-crime handbook, and set in the scary near-future (2029), the A.I. Justice System has charged a man of killing his wife, and he has only 90 minutes to prove his innocence or be executed in this sci-fi techno-thriller that plays out in real time. The catch is that it mostly takes place in a virtual courtroom, where he has to beat a 97.5% probability by gathering evidence from all the data uploaded to the internet at his disposal.

This could have easily turned into another screenlife War of the Worlds-type situation, but mercifully, it's handled a lot more competently. It's easy to get swept up in the logistics and breakneck pacing. It falters in the final third, but it's interesting enough to grab your attention and hold it there for its duration.

2½ gut instincts out of 5

Malignant (2021)

Director James Wan (Saw, Insidious, The Conjuring) returns to his horror roots in this delicious little B-movie (made on a big budget) heavily inspired by the Italian giallo genre. The trailers did such a terrific job at keeping this under wraps (almost to the point of alienating half its audience), but all I'll say is that it's one of my favorite original concepts of the past few years. It doesn't hold up to an ounce of scrutiny, but that's not what this genre has ever been particularly known for best. 

I love this freaking movie so much. Go into it as blind as possible.

4 blades glistening in the moonlight out of 5

ANNABELLE [2014]

John R. Leonetti directs Annabelle, which is pretty much a loose spin-off of the far superior The Conjuring featuring the creepy doll in the glass case.
You know the speel:  young mother who spends most of her time alone with her new born baby has a weird looking doll that may or may not be rocking that chair back and forth in the nursery.  The father is generally clueless about what's going on but there's a stranger who's very educated in the strange occurrences.  With that you know the whole film from beginning to end because we've seen it countless times before and better than this snoozer.  Being the cinematographer on The Conjuring & Insidious, Leonetti knows how to capture the look of Wan's uber-creepier films but he doesn't know how to truly scare us anywhere near as much.  There's a few good jolts near the beginning but once you become familiar with the territory it gets really boring.

2 kid's drawings out of 5