Month: October 2026

Cinema Dispatch: Street Fighter

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Street Fighter and all the images you see in this review are owned by Paramount Pictures

Directed by Kitao Sakurai

It’s no secret that both of the recent Mortal Kombat movies were disappointments, but you know what? I was never that much of a Mortal Kombat fan anyway. Okay, I wasn’t much of a Street Fighter fan either as Smash Bros and Tekken were my jam, but Street Fighter definitely has a charm to it that the trailers for this latest adaptation captured beautifully. Will this be a fun and exciting martial arts film that understands the source material, or will this somehow be an even more compromised vision than the Legend of Chun-Li? Let’s find out!!

In the late 1980s, presumably due to the success of The Karate Kid, Martial Arts had become very popular and very competitive. No one knows this better than Ryu (Andrew Koji) who was the winner of the very first World Warrior Tournament, but after a controversial victory over the mighty Sagat and a tragedy that befalls his dojo, he puts himself into exile; leaving his training partner and number one bro Ken Masters (Noah Centineo) as the presumptive champion of the world, much the same way Diesel was technically a world champion at one point. Look it up, kids. Anyway, while Ryu is in hiding and Ken is drinking himself into irrelevance, the mysterious and ruthless M Bison (David Dastmalchian) desires to become the greatest warrior of all time and will do so by hosting the second World Warrior Tournament, for which Ken is brought onboard to try and bring Ryu out of hiding. Even if he’s just a patsy, however, Ken’s determined prove himself in front of the world no matter what it takes and no matter who he has to turn his back on to get there. Can Ken prove to be a better fighter than his old partner Ryu, and is there more to his rival’s strength than either of them wishes to acknowledge? What does M Bison plan to do once he has these warriors in his grasp, and where does the mysterious Chun-Li (Callina Liang) fit into his schemes? Are we gonna have to separate these two before the tournament even begins, because it looks like they have a lot more than just sibling rivalry to work through if either of them want to get out of this without breaking half their bones and losing all their teeth.

“BIG PAPA ZANGIEF WILL PUT YOU TWO IN TIME OUT! NOW WHO WANTS TO APOLOGIZE BEFORE I TAKE THE PHONES AWAY!?”
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Cinema Dispatch: Digger

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Digger and all the images you see in this review are owned by Warner Bros. Pictures

Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Boy howdy, is this a contentious one! I certainly wasn’t expecting the film to be so polarizing given the talent behind it, but this seems to have hit a lot of people the wrong way. I guess I should have seen it coming given how silly it was for the initial trailer to be about Tom Cruise’s career that also just so happens to end with a teaser for the movie, but I guess if you’re gonna go for the Oscar, you might as well go as big as possible. I’m certainly still looking forward to it, perhaps even more so now that it’s become such a huge miss with a lot of people! Will I be one of those who will find greatness in Tom Cruise’s latest attempt to prove he can do more than jump out of planes, or is this an absolute train wreck that can only happen at the highest levels of Hollywood talent and creative hubris? Let’s find out!!

As long as the world needs oil, there will be men like Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise); an oil baron with the world at his fingertips and the US President on speed dial. Now typically, a man with that kind of power is rarely put in difficult positions, but that all changes when the one thing he can’t control, Mother Nature, gives him and the rest of humanity a kick to the gonads as one of Digger’s extraction sites in Greenland explodes and releases an ice shelf that’s on a one-way path to Europe. Not exactly the best PR for an oil company, but Digger is not about to be buried in controversy when he still calls the shots and keeps the modern world spinning. Of course, it’s not going to be an easy game of 4-D chess as everyone, from his head of environmental safety (Riz Ahmed), to his sister with a Green Energy company (Sandra Hüller), and even the very cranky President of the United States (John Goodman) is breathing down his neck to either fix the problem or make it someone else’s. With the facts of the situation so overwhelmingly against him, can Digger steer the narrative away from his company’s failings and make himself the hero of this crisis? Just how much damage can be expected from this icey torpedo of death, and is there any hope of stopping this disaster before it’s too late? Is this something that can be fixed with a few folksy stories about his grand-dad, because Digger certainly has a lot of those!

“Back in my day, a global catastrophe was just another word for opportunity! Now someone get my submarine before we’re all inhaling salt water and fish urine!”
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Cinema Dispatch: Primetime

~ Matt Vetrano ~ Leave a comment

Primetime and all the images you see in this review are owned by A24

Directed by Lance Oppenheim

Oh boy, is this nostalgic in all the worst ways. Like many Millennials, I too went down the To Catch a Predator rabbit hole and watched the entire series half a dozen times during a semester at college. It’s a pretty ugly chapter in American television that frankly deserves a reexamination given how even more destructive our criminal justice system has gotten in the twenty years since, and I could hardly think of an actor I’d want to don the Chris Hansen stare than Robert Pattinson. This could very well be the best movie of the year, especially now that Millennials are starting to take over for the Boomers and so it’s our childhoods and early twenties that will be the subject matter of prestige films going forward. Is this a devastating yet necessary deconstruction of the Justice Served Humilitainment that To Catch a Predator set the standard for, or will this be a simple pantomime of a show that was better left in the past? Let’s find out!!

In the long ago days of the mid-2000s, there was a little show called To Catch a Predator hosted by journalist Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) that sought to stop predators from taking advantage of young children. That’s what it claimed to do anyway, but it’s clear that Hansen, his producer Andie (Merritt Wever), and the crew from Perverted Justice who help him set up these sting operations are not as altruistic as the slick marketing would have you believe; not with so much fame, money, and prestige on the line. The quest to stay on top ultimately requires bigger and bigger spectacle, which means more deranged predators and a new decoy to lure them in. Enter Dan Plum (Skyler Gisondo), a young actor who didn’t seem to read the contract and finds himself in the middle of this parade of human misery, but perhaps with the right mindset and a little convincing from Chris, he can see this as a genuine calling that helps people instead of just another gig to pay the bills. Of course, this resolution will be truly tested when the crew get wind of a big fish out there on the pervert message boards; someone who isn’t just some boring loser but a genuinely connected and influential person who could cement the shows legacy and ensure its ratings domination. Will this be the show to define an era of television in all the ways that the team envisioned, or is this chaotic stab at punitive justice a cautionary tale for all of us? Can Dan put his feelings aside and accept his role as bait for these disturbed men, or will the artifice of it all leave him with scars that may never heal? Hey, maybe we’re just thinking about it too much. I mean what’s wrong with indulging in a little bit of justice every now and again?

“What else would you expect from the greatest country in the world, am I right?” “GO, AMERICA!!”
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