Movie Reviews

‘Thunderbolts*’ review: Marvel’s most entertaining movie in ages

Published

1 year ago

May 1, 2025

Press Room

movie review

THUNDERBOLTS

Running time: 126 minutes. Rated PG-13 (strong violence, language, thematic elements and some suggestive and drug references). In theaters.

Oh, the joys of watching a Marvel movie that doesn’t feel like just another Marvel movie.

Lately, the best of the 36-film-strong Marvel Cinematic Universe are the entries that blaze their own unique path, like Sony’s teen-angst “Spider-Man” series, the filthy “Deadpool & Wolverine” and now the darkly comic “Thunderbolts*.”

A funny-but-tortured femme-fatale performance from Florence Pugh as Russian assassin Yelena Belova, brutal and tactile fights and a merciful lack of confusing backstory makes for the most enjoyable MCU entry in a while.

Far from the all-powerful Eternals (dreadful movie) or generally successful Avengers, the Thunderbolts* are, well, Yelena puts it better than I could.

“Oh my God. We suck,” she says.

Most of the time, she’s dead right. For these complicated antiheroes, getting the job done is strenuous, sweaty work. A stark contrast from Tony Stark, they’re a Poor Man’s Everybody.

Yelena, Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Red Guardian (David Harbour) and John Walker (Wyatt Russell) comprise a scrappy crew of misfit toys who, while talented, are not too talented.

Against their will, the whiny pack is crammed together in a locked vault when shady CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) separately assigns them to kill each other — a lethal move to wipe away her misdeeds as well as her dangerous plan to bioengineer a super soldier.

Most of the mercenaries survive, and they band together to defeat Val, who Dreyfus chomps on like an evil Selina Meyer from “Veep.” They also must contend with the seemingly harmless but uneasy Bob (Lewis Pullman, freaky).

A lot of these characters have appeared in other MCU films or TV shows before, but, for once, you don’t have to know anything about them to like and understand “Thunderbolts*.” They’re instead defined by vibes and attitudes that are made clear from the get-go.

Yelena’s dry wit is as sharp as her jabs and kicks; Loud-and-proud Red Guardian, who drives a creaky stretch limo, comes in like a wrecking ball; Ghost has the best ability, invisibility, but is fuzzy on her powers; Walker is an embittered has-been with a chip on his shoulder; and out-of-his-depth politician Bucky’s just over it. The quintet easily clicks, sitcom-like.

That could be because “Thunderbolts*” isn’t so green-screen heavy, and the actors appear to be actually talking to one another. Groundbreaking.

As much as the film is a loner, director Jake Schreier does the meat-and-potatoes comic book moments, from clever jailbreaks to affirming rescues, very well.

Simple yet effective sequences, such as when it takes the strength of all four to prevent a slab of concrete from crushing a woman in Midtown, provide shivers that I thought unfeeling Marvel forgot how to provoke.

The ending, involving a psychological trap called “The Void” that replays prisoners’ worst memories, wobbles a touch. New Yorkers trapped in a painful, alternate mental plane reminded me of the angry pink slime from “Ghostbusters 2,” which is something I’d rather forget.

However, the finale is short. All of “Thunderbolts*” is breezy and narratively uncomplicated, unlike “Captain America: Brave New World,” which turned two hours into a lifetime.

Should “Thunderbolts*” spin out into a sub-franchise? Probably not. However, I’d like to see a lot more of Pugh’s Yelena — practically Eve Harrington of “Killing Eve” — who was also in 2021’s barely-remembered film “Black Widow.”

Yelena introduces herself by saying, “I’m in the cleanup business.”

Well, Pugh’s is the business of cleaning up the MCU.

Click to comment

Movie Reviews

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

Published

45 minutes ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

1986 Movie Reviews – Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit | The Nerdy

by Sean P. Aune | May 9, 2026

Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1986 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.

We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.

Yes, we’re insane, but 1986 was that great of a year for film.

The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1986 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.

This time around, it’s May 9, 1986, and we’re off to see Dangerously Close, Fire with Fire, Last Resort, and Short Circuit.

Dangerously Close

I would love to tell you what the point of this film was, but I’m not sure it knew.

An elite school has turned into a magnet school, attracting some “undesirables,” so a group of students known as The Sentinels take up policing their school, but will they go too far?

The basic plot of the film is simple enough, but there is an oddball “twist” toward the end tht served no real purpose and somehow turns the whole thing into a murder-mystery. Mysteries only work when you know you’re supposed to be solving them, and not when you’re alerted to one existing with 15 minutes left.

Decent 80s music, some stylistic shots, absolutely no substance.

Fire with Fire

Oh wait… I may want to go back and watch Dangerously Close again over this one.

Joe Fisk (Craig Sheffer) is being held at a juvenile delinquent facility close a high-end all-girls Catholic school. One day while running through the forest as part of an exercise he spots Catholic schoolgirl Lisa Taylor (Virginia Madsen) and the two fall immediately in love because… reasons.

This film is just so incredibly lazy. The ‘love story’ really can just be chalked up to ‘hormones.’

Last Resort

Once again I am baffled how Charles Grodin kept getting work so much through out the 1980s.

George Lollar (Grodin) is a salesman in Chicago in need of a vacation. He loads up the family and takes them to Club Sand, which turns out to be a swingers resort as well as surrounded by barbed wire to keep rebels out.

There are a lot of talented people in this movie such as Phil Hartman and Megan Mullally, but the film lets them down at every turn with half-baked ideas of jokes. Supposedly, Grodin rewrote nearly the entire script and I think that explains a lot about how this film feels like unfinished ideas. It’s a Frankenstein monster of a script with half-complete ideas that feel like they are from completely different movies.

Short Circuit

Lets just get this out of the way: What in the world was Fisher Stevens doing?

NOVA Laboratory has come up with a new series of military robots called S.A.I.N.T. (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear Transport). Following a successful demonstration for the military, Five is struck by an electrical surge and finds itself needing ‘input.’ After inadvertently escaping the lab, it wands into the life of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy), who cares for animals and takes Five in. Dr. Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) is trying to get five back, while the security team wants to destroy it.

Overall, the film is thin, but harmless. The 80s did seem to love a ‘technology being used for the wrong reasons’ theme, and this falls into that camp. What is mind-blowing, however, is Stevens as Ben Jabituya, Crosby’s assistant. Not only is he wearing brown face, but he’s doing a horrible Indian accent and later reveals he was born and raised in the U.S.

His whole character is mystifying.

Honestly, a couple of decades ago I may have recommended this movie, but it’s a definite pass now just for being offensive.

1986 Movie Reviews will continue on May 16, 2026, with Sweet Liberty and Top Gun.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: AFFECTION – Assignment X

Published

13 hours ago

May 9, 2026

Press Room

By ABBIE BERNSTEIN / Staff Writer

Posted: May 8th, 2026 / 08:34 PM

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Jessica Rothe, Joseph Cross, Julianna Layne
Writer: BT Meza
Director: BT Meza
Distributor: Brainstorm Media
Release Date: May 8, 2026

AFFECTION is an odd title for this tale. While it is about a number of topics and emotions, fondness isn’t one of them. Obsession, definitely. Love, possibly. The kind of general warm fellow feelings associated with “affection”? No.

There have been a lot of movies lately in which characters – mostly women – are grappling with false identities and/or false memories imposed upon them, mostly by men.

Let us stipulate that the protagonist (Jessica Rothe) in AFFECTION is not an android or in an artificial reality. However, we can tell something is way off from the opening sequence. A car is stalled on a tree-bordered highway. Rothe’s character is lying face down on the asphalt beside it, possibly dead.

But then the young woman rises, dragging a broken ankle. She experiences a full-body seizure. Fighting to recover, she sees oncoming headlights and tries to run, only to be hit by a car.

The woman wakes up in a bed she doesn’t recognize, next to a man (Joseph Cross) she likewise is sure she’s never seen before. One big confrontation later, the man says his name is Bruce – and that the woman is his wife, Ellie.

Ellie insists that her name is Sarah Thompson, and she is married to someone else, with a son. When she sees her reflection in a mirror, she doesn’t relate to the face looking back at her.

Bruce counters that Ellie has a rare neurological condition that causes her to block out her waking life and believe her dreams are real. This is why they agreed, together, to move to this isolated house, without the kinds of interruptions that can hinder Ellie’s recovery.

The set-up is presented in a way where we share Ellie’s skepticism. But Ellie and Bruce’s little daughter Alice (Julianna Layne) immediately identifies Ellie as “Mommy!” Alice appears to be too young to be in on any kind of deception, so what is going on here?

AFFECTION eventually explains this via a helpful videotape, though it’s so convoluted that viewers watching on streaming may want to replay the sequence to make sure they understand the exposition.

Writer/director BT Meza musters a sense of menace and lurking weirdness, as well as making great use of his location.

We still have a lot of questions, many of which are still unanswered by the film’s end. It may not matter to the points AFFECTION is trying to make, but a better sense of exactly how all this started might help our investment.

As it is, despite a heroically versatile performance by Rothe, a credible and anguished turn by Cross and appealing work from Layne, we’re so busy trying to piece together what’s important and what’s not and how we’re supposed to feel about all of it that it can be hard to keep track of the action as it unfolds.

Agree or not, Meza’s arguments are lucid and illustrated clearly by AFFECTION’s events. However, the movie is structured in a way that becomes more frustrating as it goes. We comprehend it intellectually but can’t engage viscerally.

Related: Movie Review: ITCH!
Related: Movie Review: HOKUM
Related: Movie Review: ANIMAL FARM
Related: Movie Review: OVER YOUR DEAD BODY
Related: Movie Review: THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
Related: Movie Review: BASIC PYSCH
Related: Movie Review: SCREAMS FROM THE TOWER
Related: Movie Review: FUZE
Related: Movie Review: LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY
Related: Movie Review: HAPPY HALLOWEEN
Related: Movie Review: NORMAL
Related: Movie Review: MOTHER MARY
Related: Movie Review: FACES OF DEATH
Related: Movie Review: EXIT 8
Related: Movie Review: HAMLET
Related: Movie Review: THE YETI
Related: Movie Review: OUR HERO, BALTHAZAR
Related: Movie Review: THE SERPENT”S SKIN
Related: Movie Review: PRETTY LETHAL
Related: Movie Review: READY OR NOT 2: HERE I COME

Follow us on Twitter at ASSIGNMENT X
Like us on Facebook at ASSIGNMENT X

Article Source: Assignment X
Article: Movie Review: AFFECTION

Movie Reviews

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

Published

1 day ago

May 8, 2026

Press Room

8News Reel Talk: ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2’ movie review

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) — In this episode of 8News Reel Talk, digital producer Julia Broberg is joined by anchor Deanna Allbrittin and reporter Allison Williams to talk about “The Devil Wears Prada 2.”

The hosts gave their reviews and assigned the following star ratings:

Deanna: ★★★★.5

Allison: ★★★.25

Julia: ★★

To watch more livestreams and digital video content, head to the WRIC+ Originals page. You can also watch full on-demand videos on your smart TV using the WRIC+ app.