Digger (2026) * 1/2

 

Directed by:  Alejandro G. Inarritu

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Huller, Jesse Plemons, Michael Stuhlbarg

Digger's marketing campaign did its box-office performance no favors, but maybe that was necessary in order to protect its Big Reveal.  However, the reveal itself doesn't add much depth or interest to the film.  What we have are superior actors spewing lots of dialogue and yelling at each other.  Digger's art direction and set decoration may wind up nabbing some awards, but the rest can sleep in when the Golden Globes, Actor Awards, and Oscar nominations are announced. 

The scenery in some cases draws attention away from the characters, and that may be just as well, since there isn't one we care about in the whole movie.  Digger Rockwell (Cruise) is an oil zillionaire who wakes up one morning to find his beloved cat has hours to live and one of his oil rigs in Greenland exploded and caused a massive glacier to separate from the mainland and drift towards continental Europe.  Once it crashes into Europe, we'll see tsunamis and floods like none the continent has ever experienced, or so says Dr. Ganesh (Ahmed) who works for U.S. President Compson (Goodman), who is dying of anal cancer.  

It's now up to Digger to save the day, until the plot twist reveals itself about thirty minutes into a movie which already is trying its mightiest to be Different.  It is different indeed, but not a positive different.  Inarritu and Cruise want to make larger statements about impending environmental doom which Inarritu himself discussed in his Oscar speech for directing The Revenant.  He stated how he was unable to film certain scenes in the snow because snow was scarce even in the mountains.  Now we have Digger, which is a full extension of that idea which apparently wasn't made with entertaining the audience in mind.  

Digger is an unpleasant experience with characters we don't care about mouthing lots of words which add up to soliloquies and speeches that drone on endlessly.  I'm not going to be mean and give away any spoilers, because by the time they arrive, Digger is pretty much already spoiled.  During the many years in which Tom Cruise played one action hero after another, I lamented that he could be using his talents for other projects which present us with his vast acting range.  He's a superb actor, but with Digger I suppose I should've been careful what I wished for.  

Heart of the Beast (2026) * * *

Directed by: David Ayer

Starring:  Brad Pitt, JK Simmons

Heart of the Beast is a beautifully photographed adventure in which its heroes, retired soldier James Belmont (Pitt) and his canine pal Odin who served with him in combat, battle through the unforgiving Alaskan wilderness trying to survive long enough to make it to a desolate road where they could be rescued.   The opening of Heart of the Beast has James landing his Cessna on a peaceful lake and later he and Odin are lakeside with James drinking beer and flyfishing.  

However, at night, both James and Odin deal with PTSD from the horrors of war.  This is the first movie I've seen in which we witness a dog endure the same PTSD effects as their human counterparts.  James has to talk him down from his nightmares in a moving scene.  A lonesome stranger (Simmons) happens upon James and Odin and spends time by the campfire, which is pretty much the most dialogue you'll find in the movie.  The rest is James talking to Odin (and by extension us).  While flying the Cessna in an attempt to flee before a bad storm, James suffers a heart attack and crashes the plane into a lake.  The plane sinks, and James and Odin manage to survive but not without wounds.  James nurses Odin back to health and the two work from a map to determine they must hike 58 miles over one week to reach the road to rescue.  

James and Odin encounter ravenous wolves, rampaging rivers, and other obstacles which test their mettle and their physical well-being past the threshold most others couldn't tolerate.  The Alaskan wilderness is seen as both beautiful and treacherous sometimes in the same scene.  Pitt is completely convincing as the former soldier who relies on his survival skills to make it as far as he does.  But Odin is not simply a dog, but one we view with love and compassion just as he does for James.  He's the co-star of Heart of the Beast and in many ways its soul.  

Primetime (2026) * *

 

Directed by:  Lance Oppenheim

Starring: Robert Pattinson, Sklyer Gisondo, Merritt Wever, Anna Faris    

One of the many puzzling issues with Primetime is why it is painting its protagonist Dateline NBC's Chris Hansen (Pattinson) as a villain.  He was the host of the 2000's ratings hit To Catch a Predator, in which the Dateline team snags would-be pedophiles who show up at a decoy home to meet with kids they are grooming online.  Hansen confronts the creeps and conducts quasi interviews while toying with their guilt before having the police come and arrest them.  The show ended in 2007 and was subject to lawsuits for years after, including by the family of a Texas DA who committed suicide when he was to be arrested on camera for propositioning who he thought was a teenage boy.  This is depicted in the movie, but by then, Hansen is depicted as a soulless egomaniac only in search of higher ratings and nothing more.

The movie focuses on the wrong things.  We meet a 23-year-old struggling actor (Gisondo), who is hired by Dateline to portray a 13-year-old boy to lure in pedophiles.  He has a boyish look and a high-pitched voice which makes him perfect for the job, but he's not as potentially interesting as Hansen.  The movie ends not with what happened to Hansen, but with what happens to the actor.  It's a way to tack on a happy ending which isn't one we care about anyway.  I guess we're happy for him, but what happens to the star of the show?

Despite the repetitive nature of the show itself, it remained a ratings smash, but Primetime doesn't explore that.  The movie just ends without resolving anything and without explanations.  There isn't even an epilogue detailing what happened to the show, Chris Hansen, or anything else.  It has one point of view: Chris Hansen is just as much a monster as the predators he catches in the act, and that my friends is simply bunk. 

The Weight (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Padraic McKinley

Starring:  Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Austin Amelio, Avery Perry, Avi Nash, Julia Jones

The Weight is a movie about desperate Oregon Depression-era prisoners looking to secure their freedom by hiking gold bars through the wilderness which will enrich their warden and his cronies.  Sam Murphy (Hawke) is one month from losing his daughter (Perry) to the state adoption system unless he is freed from prison in time to regain custody of her.  Warden Clancy (Crowe), after witnessing Murphy solve a problem of moving an immovable rock during their road construction project, offers Murphy and four other prisoners a chance to win their freedom if they can move the gold successfully upriver.   Clancy is a charmer who sounds like he may be as good as his word, or too good to be true.  Murphy is willing to take that chance.

The Weight is an adventure with superior cinematography and a score that reminded me of the techno one featured in Oscar-winner All Quiet on the Western Front (2022).  I would not be surprised to see The Weight listed as one of the Oscar nominees for Best Cinematography coming Oscar time.  Hawke's performance carries the movie as a strong, determined man imprisoned for defending he and his daughter against cops looking to assault them.  He was just evicted from his apartment, but we learn he is intelligent and handy fixing almost anything.  This ingratiates him to Clancy when he is able to repair Clancy's car so it can run again.  

FDR wanted to take the country off the gold standard and centralize the gold into one location.  The miners in cahoots with Clancy want the gold not to find its way to where the government wants it.  Murphy and his crew, along with goons working with the miners, are tasked with moving the gold in backpacks across treacherous forests.  How heavy those must be after a few steps, let alone miles and miles per day.  They are joined by Anna (Jones), a Native American woman with skills of her own whose home as been wrecked by the mining company.  In another movie, she would be a romantic interest for Murphy, but thankfully not in this one.

The Weight's momentum ebbs and flows with each obstacle such as a raggedy bridge which surely can't sustain the weight of the prisoners and the gold, leaving Murphy to come up with an ingenious plan to move both without the bridge collapsing.  The scenes in which they camp for the night don't hold as much interest, and they feel like marking time until the next day's move.  The payoff for this entire enterprise, though, makes the movie more than worthwhile, involving an offer to Clancy that he would be stupid to refuse.  The Weight is an atmospheric action film and that's a compliment. 

Runner (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Scott Waugh

Starring:  Alan Ritchson, Owen Wilson, Leila George, Rodrigo Santoro

With this summer's Motor City and now Runner, Alan Ritchson has established himself as a formidable movie action star.   It's hard to describe Ritchson without using the word "hulk" and in Runner, he plays a hulking courier with a heart of gold and pain in his soul.  Runner takes place in Brisbane, Australia and I love movies where Americans occupy stories that take place in other countries and the characters give a lengthy explanation as to how they wound up in Australia, England, Ireland, etc.   We all know those nations must have given Hollywood very favorable tax breaks.  

In Runner, Ritchson plays Hank, a grieving father of a young daughter who recently died.  He also is still in love with his ex-wife, whose new beau has the annoying habit of being a terribly nice guy.  Today is Hank's one-year anniversary of sobriety and he has been tasked with picking up a liver which will be delivered to a hospital to be used for a dying seven-year-old girl's transplant.  Accompanying the liver is Ben Bishop (Wilson), who goes along for what is supposed to be a fifteen-minute ride to the hospital, but Hank's car is soon descended upon by thugs led by Damien (Santoro), who wants the liver for his own purposes.  Cue the car chases and the action scenes.  

However, the fight scenes have a Jackie Chan quality to them in which everything is used but the kitchen sink to subdue the opponent(s).  It takes the edge off of the blood and broken bones.  I admired the creativity which elevates what would be standard movie violence.  There are a few surprises in Runner, and I also couldn't help but think of Ritchson in Ordinary Angels, where he plays a father whose daughter needs a transplant or will die.  In Ordinary Angels, he was a hard-working family man of few words.  He speaks a few more in Runner, and throws many more punches.  Runner is surely not a movie in which the liver won't find its way to the little girl despite so many obstacles being thrown in Hank and Ben's way.  It's engaging and the fate of one of the main characters is something we don't see coming.  

By Any Means (2026) * * *

 

Directed by:  Elegance Bratton

Starring:  Mark Wahlberg, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, David Strathairn, Josh Lucas, Nicole Beharie, Giancarlo Esposito

By Any Means covers some of the ground as Mississippi Burning in the sense that the most effective way to gather information is to pound it out of the racist locals.  This happened in 1964, when By Any Means opens with New York mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. (Wahlberg-doing his best goombah) is cracking skulls, knees, and anything else in order to obtain the whereabouts of three missing civil rights workers.  Cut to two years later, FBI agent Wayne Strider (Mateen II) moves from Chicago down to the rural Mississippi town where he grew up attempting to solve a series of race-related crimes.  The locals won't talk to the FBI and especially a black agent, so the FBI teams Strider up with Scarpa to get a little rough...off the record of course.

It turns out Scarpa turned state's evidence a while back and works for the FBI as an informant.  He does the dirty work, and the FBI keeps the mob off of Scarpa's back.  Strider wants to do things by the book, and we know what Scarpa is all about.  By Any Means is in a way a more violent version of Green Book, but it is a study of contrast in styles (old school vs. new school) more so than a study of race relations.  Will Scarpa learn to be kinder and gentler or will Strider decide to take the gloves off when his family is attacked and his best friend is burned to death when the KKK sets his house on fire?

We know how this will go, and while By Any Means isn't a deep movie, it's involving during its 105-minute running time.  It turns out to be fairly close to the truth, with the addition of some dramatic license taken to consolidate time, but as far as true stories go, it sticks close to what actually happened. 

I enjoyed the savage energy of Wahlberg, while Mateen II is a big guy trying to work within a system that simply won't allow cooperation.  By Any Means won't be an awards-season juggernaut, but it achieves its desired result and it works on its own oddball level.  

Coach Carter (2005) * * *

 

Directed by:  Thomas Carter

Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, Channing Tatum, Ashanti, Ron Brown, Rick Gonzales

Ken Carter (Jackson) is a former star player at Los Angeles' Richmond High School who has assumed the thankless role of basketball coach.  Carter makes it clear at the outset he doesn't take guff and he is there not only to win games, but to mold his players into lives beyond basketball.  He demands his players sign contracts to attend classes and sit in the front row.  He expects teachers to provide him with progress reports on his players' attendance and grades.  When the players and teachers ignore him, he locks the players out of the gym and forfeits games, which brings national attention and community outrage.  

Coach Carter's message (both the movie and person) is simple:  Only a miniscule fraction of players ever reach the NBA.  It is wise to get an education and secure a better future than life on the streets where you'll more than likely be killed before your next birthday.  Coach Carter is kinder version of Joe Clark (from Lean on Me) but he's rigid in his standards.  Samuel L. Jackson commands the screen in his own inimitable way in Coach Carter.  He is someone who hasn't given up on his players even if the rest of the world has.

The players themselves aren't out of Welcome Back, Kotter, but each has their own story and all fall in line once they understand Coach Carter knows what he's talking about.  The scenes outside the school and basketball courts maintain a familiar rhythm, and of course there's The Big Game, which almost contrasts the point of the movie.  However, Coach Carter for the most part remains involving.