The End of Oak Street and more shorties
Here’s to the under-two-hour movie.
I hung in there with The Odyssey’s nearly three-hour run time, I can stick with and enjoy a longer movie.
But I truly appreciate a movie that can get in and out in an economical 100 or so minutes, which is what Aug. 14 theatrical release The End of Oak Streetand many of the other movies mentioned here manage. Short, fun, occasionally funny, unapologetically goofy-action-packed, not an IP or a sequel — with that and its “kids on bikes” scenes, it has a real throwback feel.
It is also set in 1982 suburbia, so you get a lot of that faded late ’70s vibe. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and husband Greg (Ewan McGregor) also feel sort of faded as a couple. When they aren’t trying to fight quietly at a neighborhood block party, they are openly yelling in the family home, which Greg deals with by taking nips from a garage whiskey bottle and Denise handles by writing a book about a wife yearning to leave her family. The teenage Audrey (Maisy Stella) and tween Brian (Christian Convery) have definitely picked up on the couple’s problems.
After a night or two of seeing a bright light suddenly appear and vanish just outside the house, the family members see one bright light — maybe lightning, they wonder — that seems to cause the power and phones and water to go out. When the parents go outside the next day, they don’t see downed power lines but they do hear strange noises and see what at first Greg thinks might be the family dog and then realizes, when he gets a good look, is a large, feathery raptor of the dinosaur variety. The couple manages to make it back inside before getting eaten — not all of their neighbors are as lucky — and immediately start boarding up windows and trying to figure out how much food they have.
As we and they eventually figure out (and as the trailers give away), their neighborhood has been lifted out of our time and plopped back millions of years ago. How will they survive and is there a way back will be their chief questions — well and Brian will also keep looking for his dog and maybe Denise is wondering if she and Greg are still divorce-bound.
There is a fair amount of goofballery in this movie that the movie and the characters take absolutely seriously but that I think we are meant to laugh at. The southern California golden light and the bikes and the ancient-seeming station wagons gives this a very Steven Spielberg-lite feel but there is a B movie quality to some of the creature antics.
Hathaway is not “important movie Oscar contention” good here but she does a good job as the mom character in this sort of thing — think Dee Wallace in E.T. or JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist.
McGregor is equally enjoyable if a less steady member of Team Run Away From Dinosaurs in his role as Greg. McGregor has a way of playing this “regular” guy as just off kilter, with a sort-of-a-screw-up energy. Here, he ups the goofiness of any scene he’s in about 17 percent, even when he’s playing it dead seriously.
The audience in my screening included at least one group of movie goers who decided to have fun, give some “yay!”s to a scene where a dinosaur gets whacked with a sledgehammer and when the family dog shows up. I feel like this is the appropriate spirit in which to see and enjoy this movie, which feels like a throwaway “ha, nice” little August treat of a movie.
Also debuting last week was Don’t Say Good Luckon Netflix. “However much we as a culture appreciate Melanie Lynskey, we need to appreciate her much much more” and “Sunny Sandler has some serious acting chops” are two thoughts I had repeatedly throughout this dramady about a teenage girl dealing with both her role in the school play and the grave illness of her mother. Sandler, daughter of Manchester’s own Adam, plays Sophie, who learns that her mother’s cancer has returned via a butt-dial by her father, Ted (Max Greenfield, taking it to 11 with his decent-guy dad), right before she goes onstage to audition for a supporting role in her high school’s production of Waitress. Absorbing the news while she sings, she gives a performance that makes teacher-director Mrs. Parker (Stephanie Beatriz) consider her for the lead. Meanwhile, at home, mom Elizabeth (Lynskey) and Ted try to put on a good face for Sophie and her two younger brothers, even though Elizabeth seems to be getting sicker. Sophie is also dealing with standard but still heartbreaking teenage drama including a rupture with her longtime best friend Carolyn (Scarlett Estevez) and Sophie’s crush on her costar Jack (Jack Champion).
Steve Buscemi and Bebe Neuwirth show up as Elizabeth’s parents, doing good, heart-tugging work. Even Jon Lovitz impresses with a small role as a worker at Ted’s deli. Everybody here is note-perfect, down to the other kids theater-kid-ing it up on the production of the play.
Sandler is definitely a strong talent in her own right. I thought she did good work in teen comedy You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (also on Netflix, also worth a watch) and this movie proves that wasn’t a fluke and that she is growing into a compelling actress with range.
Lynskey, of course, adds fabulous to everything she’s in. Here, she reminds me a bit of Rachel McAdams in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in how Lynskey, as McAdams did, is able to convey a lot of her character’s own emotions and inner struggles through interactions with the daughter who is really more the movie’s focus (that movie is currently streaming on Prime Video, and available via rent or purchase).
Don’t Say Good Luck is a top shelf coming-of-age + light comedy + weepiness cocktail. I almost feel like this movie is wasted as a streaming release but I’m not sure that a mother-daughter-focused film like this could make it in the current cinema-outside-your-house environment. Let’s just count ourselves lucky that we get it at all.
There are several earlier 2026 releases now available for a home watch.
Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Passwas a July theatrical release and is now on VOD for rent or purchase, which feels bad for the film industry but great for me because this movie is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen in a while, I say with the highest level of compliment and respect.
This endeavor comes from the The State and Wet Hot American Summer players (David Wain directed; he and Ken Marino cowrote; The State is streaming on Paramount+ and Wet Hot American Summer is available for rent or purchase). Kansas hairstylist Gail Daughtry (Zoey Deutch) and high school sweetheart fiance Tom (Michael Cassidy) are just a few weeks out from their wedding and, on the way to a cookbook reading by Jennifer Aniston, flirtily talk about their respective celebrity sex passes. Gail decides on Jon Hamm, Tom immediately says Tilda Swinton. After meeting Aniston and deciding that she’s swell, Tom changes his pass to her, which Gail laughs off while she waits for Tom to run back and get his coat from the signing. When he doesn’t return to the car, she goes to look for him and finds that he has, indeed, used his “pass.” Gail is horrified and not sure what to do or whether to go ahead with her wedding and decides to go with coworker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley) to a convention headlined by “King of the Whip Curl Remy Fontaine” (Thomas Lennon) in Los Angeles. Gail and Otto also decide that, what with Jon Hamm living in Los Angeles, this is her opportunity to try to use her pass, level the infidelity playing field and maybe save her relationship. But due to an accidental suitcase swap with some gangsters (including Joe Lo Truglio) who stop to take a fan pic with Henry Winkler — Vinnie Barbarino himself, as one gangster later says, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it example of why this is a movie to watch sans phone — Gail is soon being hunted by an international terrorist with perfect skin (Sabrina Impacciatore) even while on her own quest.
There are so many reasons to enjoy this excellent gleeful-stupid movie. There’s John Slattery playing a hard-up version of John Slattery. There’s an Old West bar fight. There are a zillion tiny throwaway lines, sight gags and facial expressions that have been calibrated just right. There are a fair amount of extremely game famous-es showing up to wink at the camera (in at least one case, literally). And throughout there’s a pretty fun, cleverly executed riff on a quest tale. This is the kind of brilliant-stupid that has made me always at least a little excited to show up for a project from these guys and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is a particularly well-crafted dumb good time.
Much as with Obsession, a horror movie I recently reviewed,Tuner (a May theatrical release available for rent or purchase) feels like a strong contender for a Best Sound Oscar nomination, one that makes excellent use of both sound design and sound editing. Niki (Leo Woodall) works as a piano tuner with his uncle-like mentor Harry (Dustin Hoffman). Once a talented piano player, Niki now has hyperacusis, which he describes as being allergic to sound and which you should definitely not look up if you’re a person who tends to freak out about any new medical thing you learn about. He wears ear plugs all the time and an extra pair of sound-dampening headphones most of the time, and is generally a rather keep-to-himself sort of guy. But then at a job at a music school he meets piano player and composer Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu) and even their mutual awkwardness — due to Niki’s condition and Ruthie’s upcoming deadline for impressing a composer she wants to intern for — can’t hold back their chemistry.
Their budding relationship comes at a stressful time for Niki. Harry is sick and his wife Marla (Tovah Feldshuh, excellent as always) tells him they are tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. Shouldering the business alone and desperate to find more cash quickly, Niki decides to call Uri (Lior Raz), the owner of security company Niki met while tuning a piano at a fancy house. Well, “met” might not be as accurate as “caught trying to break into a safe.” Seems that while Uri and his guys install security systems, they also return to the odd house to steal, as one guy explains, the stuff (watches, jewelry and other items hidden in safes) their rich clients have so much of they won’t notice if it’s missing. Niki’s hypersensitivity to sound means that he can also hear things like the click of the metal tooth sliding into the correct numbered spot in a safe lock. So he opens the safe to stop Uri’s men from the loud drilling. Uri knows an excellent business opportunity when he sees it.
Tuner is sort of a combination heist movie, a romance between two prickly people and a character study of Niki in his attempt to eke out a new life for himself after suffering the medical setback that took away his music career. Each part of this movie is engaging and well drawn and flows together nicely. Woodall is good at showing the constant underlying tension of Niki as he moves through his day. He acts like he is always near a wince, like his pain level is perpetually at a 4 and he’s trying to muscle through the day, the conversation, the general noise of the city.
Havana Rose Liu is also in Power Ballad, another May release now available for rent or purchase. Her role here is much smaller, as the girlfriend of Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a one-time boy band star now trying to make it as a solo musician. Rick Power (Paul Rudd), the lead singer of a band that predominantly plays covers at weddings, meets Danny at his friend’s posh wedding and after Danny sings a song with the band, he and Rick end up hanging out that evening. They talk music, they play music and they drink a lot. At one point Rick plays Danny a song he’s been working on for years and Danny joins in playing it with him. And, like, if you didn’t know you were watching a John Carney movie (he directed and co-wrote this), you would know by this scene that so lovingly depicts the creation of a song. Carney also wrote and directed Once (RIP Glen Hansard), Begin Again, Sing Street and Flora and Son, all movies that I enjoy and that would be very handy if you ever had to explain “yeah, but like what is music really?” to an extraterrestrial.
Six months after this music-filled night, Rick hears that song, his song, while he’s walking through a mall. After looking it up, he learns that the song “How To Write a Song Without You” is a massive hit and has reenergized Danny’s career. Rick’s daughter Aja (Beth Fallon) asks if they’re rich now, presuming Rick has some sort of credit on the song. But of course he doesn’t and can’t prove to anyone, not his wife Rachel (Marcella Plunkett) nor his band mates nor a lawyer, that he wrote the song. Apparently, they’ve had to endure a lot of “Rick makes guitar face and sings at us” over the years. Rick sort of drives himself crazy over what to do about this unacknowledged creation of his and what exactly he’s looking for.
It’s very fitting that a John Carney movie centers itself on a song — what it means, what it means to make it, what it means to let it out in the world. It’s a specific kind of nerding out about music (and creation in general) that I find very enjoyable. Power Ballad is thinner, I think, than some of his other movies but still a solid story with good performances from Jonas and from Rudd, looking more beat up and even, gasp, a little more weathered than he usually does, which fits the role perfectly. If you’ve never seen a John Carney movie before, sure, this one is good, but definitely check out those others: Once (rent or purchase), Begin Again (streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime Video and a few things that may or may not be real like Howdy and Lionsgate+, as well as rent or purchase), Sing Street (Starz, rent or purchase) and Flora and Son (Apple TV, rent or purchase).
Also streaming now is the May 29 release Pressure, which is on Peacock (as well as rent or purchase). This is a movie about the weather forecast for D-Day in 1944 — like, that’s it, that’s the movie. The overly confident American guy Irv Krick (Chris Messina) brags about predicting the weather for David O. Selznick and says the planned invasion day — June 5 — would be sunny and fair. The British guy, a Scot named James Stagg (Andrew Scott), direly predicts storms with massive waves and suggests putting off the invasion for a couple of weeks. Preposterous, says British Army General Bernard Montgomery (Damian Lewis). What am I supposed to do, yells a tense U.S. Army General Dwight Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser). There there, says Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), a British Mechanised Transport Corps Lieutenant and Eisenhower’s private secretary, as Wikipedia says (Wikipedia says other things too, rabbit hole at your leisure).
We’re kind of shuffling through the remainders when it comes to finding new stories to tell about World War II, was my thinking while watching this movie — through really, it’s more like “new stories based on the people we know” because there are I’m sure tons of fascinating stories from parts of the war that aren’t just the tippy top of the military command in Europe. Here, we get a nice bit of “here’s the role the weather played in Allied landing in France” and my response was “huh, how about that.” I don’t know that it warrants a full movie and this movie isn’t doing anything particularly thrilling with its tale. I feel like Fraser, with Ike’s balding head and a perpetual look of indigestion, is doing the big performance and Scott is really trying to do a subtle-ish performance and we have the lady character who seems like she’s been elected mom-wife of everybody and we get a stirring rendition of a historical speech (Eisenhower’s address to the troops on D-Day). This isn’t that far, structurally, from a Darkest Hour or The King’s Speech. It’s not as well done as those movies but it’s not actively bad. It’s lightly fine, and probably OK-enough for a watch with your most history-loving parent.
Also based on a true story is March release Tow (available on Prime Video or rent or purchase). Amanda Ogle (Rose Byrne) got dealt some bad hands by life, made some mistakes, did some self-medicating and got on the wrong side of a tough economy, which is how she winds up sleeping in her 1991 Toyota Camry in present-ish day Seattle while trying to find a job with her veterinary assistant license. She gets a job at a fancy dog spa but it is quickly imperiled when, after the interview, she sees that her car has been stolen. After two calendar days, police find the car and it is towed to a lot where she can pick it up for the low cost of $270-some. Why do I have to pay to get my own stolen car back, she asks, not catching a break from the towing company and leaving with the knowledge that every day it sits in the lot, the car will cost her an extra $50 to spring. She files a lawsuit and gets a judge to order the release, without fine, of her car, but by this time some 20-ish days after it was impounded, the towing company has sold it. She turns to Kevin (Dominic Sessa), a lawyer at a nonprofit firm, to help her fight the company as she tries to keep herself safe and sober, eventually landing a semi-permanent spot at a shelter run by Barb (Octavia Spencer). There she meets others dealing with homelessness and other issues including the pregnant Nova (Demi Lovato) and Denise (Ariana DeBose), who, like Amanda, is struggling to keep up a relationship with her kids who live with their father. Amanda’s kid Avery (Elsie Fisher), who lives in Utah, is clearly desperate to have a relationship with Amanda but isn’t sure if Amanda, whose drinking and other problems have gotten in the way of her being a reliable parent, is truly able to be someone Avery can count on.
Bryne gives a strong performance of someone who, despite having taken many blows by life, is still actively fighting to improve her situation. She is able to show us the messy parts of Amanda along with her toughness and her deep love for Avery. It helps to pull the movie through some of the moments that feel a little “television movie about a Very Serious Issue,” making Amanda a person rather than the personification of an Issue. Likewise, the supporting characters help to ground the movie in something like human people. And you can enjoy your righteous anger at the whole concept of “$50 a day to get your stolen car back” with Corbin Bernsen playing the humanity-free personification of a predatory business in his role as the towing company’s lawyer.
Featured photo: The Last House.
