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A rowdy 'Road House' premiere, on screen and off, marks the start of SXSW

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A rowdy 'Road House' premiere, on screen and off, marks the start of SXSW

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes something like Friday night’s premiere of “Road House” at SXSW. The event had unexpected surprises from start to finish, including but not limited to the movie itself.

The project has been dogged by controversy: Director Doug Liman previously stated publicly that he would not attend the premiere of his remake of the beloved 1989 film starring Patrick Swayze because he was disappointed that Amazon had decided the film would go straight to the Prime Video streaming service without a theatrical release.

More recently the screenwriter of the original film, R. Lance Hill, sued Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios and its parent company, Amazon Studios, over copyright issues, including allegations that AI was used to complete the film.

But all that was cast aside for a rollicking event to celebrate a movie with an anarchic energy. Introducing the film, star Jake Gyllenhaal announced that Liman was indeed in the audience, calling him “our incredible director.”

As Gyllenhaal proceeded to call out various cast members in the audience, they were seemingly scattered all over the floor of the theater, shouting out when their names were called. Jessica Williams gave a big “Oh, hell yeah, Jake!” from somewhere toward the back of the room.

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Once the lights went down, a card onscreen dedicated the screening to the memory of Swayze, who died in 2009.

The movie is a playful reimagining of the original, with Gyllenhaal as Elwood Dalton, a former MMA fighter haunted by memories of an incident during a fight. Now a drifter scrounging by on an underground fight circuit, Dalton is offered a job by Frankie (Williams) to work as a bouncer at her bar in the Florida Keys. What she doesn’t tell him is that she is being harassed by a local developer and crime boss, Brandt (Billy Magnussen), who wants the land her place is on. Among those coming for them is a crazed henchman, Knox (Conor McGregor), hired by Brandt’s imprisoned father.

The crowd cheered wildly for the fighting scenes in the movie, in particular the final showdown between Gyllenhaal and McGregor. Shot in the Dominican Republic, the film has breathtaking scenery and some genuinely outrageous stunts with boats. Liman imbues the entire film with a gonzo sensibility where anything can happen. Gyllenhaal’s first confrontation with a biker gang, in which he slaps them all rather them punching them before inflicting further violence, captures the spirited tone of the movie.

The film features an “introducing Conor McGregor” title card, as the former UFC champion makes his acting debut in the film. He brings a wild flair to the character, who is meant to be an unpredictable agent of chaos.

Dax Shepard, host of the “Armchair Expert” podcast and avowed fan of the original film, moderated the post-screening Q&A, taking the stage with a long list of questions as he brought out much of the main cast, including Gyllenhaal, McGregor, Williams, Magnussen, Post Malone, Lukas Gage, Daniela Melchior and JD Pardo.

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McGregor, who earlier in the evening made his way down the aisle of the theater waving a bottle of alcohol and pouring drinks for people in the reserved-seating section, was, shall we say, very enthusiastic. He took over answering many of the questions, the combination of his thick Irish accent and the venue’s microphones rendering many of his responses unintelligible to the delight of those onstage and in the audience.

Talking about the casting of McGregor, Gyllenhaal said, “We were chasing Conor and hoping that he would do the movie and then all of a sudden we got the call that he was doing it. And you know that feeling when you buy the house you always wanted and you’re like, what the f— did I just do?”

Suddenly Williams injected, “The millennials are like: No, we don’t!”

Laughing, Gyllenhaal continued, “The feeling was like, Oh, my God, this is the most incredible feeling. And then it was like I wanted to run as far as I possibly could.”

“It’s very hard work for sure,” McGregor said. “I thought to myself as I was watching the movie, I’m gonna f— this up.”

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As for whether he will do more acting, McGregor said in reference to the film, “I do know, looking at that with the crowd, I have a lot more to give. I feel I have a lot more.”

He added, “Doug Liman is not on the stage and he should be on the stage,” and the audience burst into cheers as Liman stood up in the audience.

As McGregor continued to amusingly hijack the Q&A, Shepard regained control by noting the paper in his hand and saying, “The studio wants these questions asked.”

Having thrown a question to Malone, who appears in an early scene in the movie, the musician answered, “I don’t know what I am doing. I was saying backstage that there is no Autotune for acting. It really is a lot of hard work.”

Shepard asked Gyllenhaal for his favorite movie tough guys and Gyllenhaal said, “Well, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t bring Mr. Swayze back in the mix. For me as a kid though, it wasn’t at first ‘Road House,’ it was ‘Point Break.’ And subsequently my sister took me to see ‘Dirty Dancing’ like four times. I mean, he was even a tough guy in that.

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“But really ultimately I think he was just packed with charisma. So much so that it’s pushed this story all the way even to here. And so I just gotta give it up to Patrick.”

Once the Q&A was finished, as everyone was making their way out of the theater (Liman wearing an outsized black cowboy hat), cries went out for medical assistance from the aisle where the cast was exiting from.

A member of McGregor’s entourage seemed to have passed out. As he was being attended to, the man was revived and was sitting in a chair drinking water as emergency medical services, firefighters and police officers all promptly arrived. McGregor and a small group of people stayed with him, looking to diffuse the situation. There was some chatter of it all being a matter of “hydration.”

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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