A decade and a half after he co-directed the animated film of the same name, Dean DeBlois helms the 2025 live-action version of How to Train Your Dragon (B), and it often soars. The cuteness and spunk of the titular dragon Toothless doesn’t fully translate into the real-life fantasy realm, but the flights of fancy, rugged adventure and central character conflict make for solid family entertainment. Action and adventure fans should not be disappointed; in fact, the dread and doom are heightened in this production. As the film’s protagonist, Mason Thames is a dynamic lead as he weighs whether to be a warrior or whisperer in dealing with the beasts plaguing his Viking island. Gerard Butler is a bit more basic as his boorish warrior dad, and few others in the ensemble were standouts. The effects are quite strong throughout, and the rousing score by John Powell enlivens even some overextended sequences. For those who savor repeat viewings of this favorite scale tale, the remake is nearly interchangeable with its modern classic predecessor. It traces the same arch but doesn’t bring all that much new firepower.
It ultimately delivers a noble message about appreciating the finite nature of human life and its myriad connections, but Mike Flanagan’s sentimental and befuddling The Life of Chuck (C-) takes the form of a gourmet pretzel cooling off for a significant spell before it finally cuts the mustard. Because Stephen King doesn’t write Hallmark cards, his adapted source material is called a novella; and in three acts told in reverse order, the tonally confused film of this story traces an array of key moments in the titular character’s timeline. These incidents range from stargazing at the end of the world to spontaneous dancing in public, but the sweet and salty sequences rarely coalesce into a satisfying meal. There’s an emptiness at the center of the movie that well-meaning actors ranging from Tom Hiddleston to Jacob Tremblay playing Chuck at various ages can’t adequately embody. Supporting characters dole out doses of wisdom in this treacly journey, and actors such as Chiwetel Ejiofor and Mark Hamill don’t get much to do in their passages. The combination of a lack of gravity in the film’s core and the backwards storytelling cloak the film’s perky emptiness. There’s a chance some of the individual revelations may touch viewers in various ways, but it could also just be relief that the film is reaching completion. Wistful narration and nostalgia aren’t enough to fill in the blanks of this listless film.
This week trailers for two anticipated movie musicals dropped: Wicked: For Good, the continued telling of Stephen Schwartz’s Oz-set saga, and Kiss of the Spider Woman, based on the Kander and Ebb musical which was in turn a non-musical movie in the ’80s.
John M. Chu’s second Wicked film features vocals by Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo and Jonathan Bailey, among others. It features “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” and “For Good,” among others.
Bill Condon’s Spider Woman features Jennifer Lopez in the title role, belting out standards such as “Where You Are.”
Which of these fall features puts a spring in your step? Hopefully both!
Lead actor Tim Robinson is honorary jester of the cringe festival that is writer/director Andrew DeYoung’s dark comedy Friendship (B-), often more interesting for its twisty takes on a funny theme than any passing resemblance to reality. Robinson plays a suburban husband and dad who falls hard for a charismatic new neighbor played by Paul Rudd. A series of increasingly unfortunate – and often quite funny – events threatens to send the burgeoning bromance asunder. The premise is a hoot, that modern men have lost the ability to properly forge functional friendships, but the details in the detours offer a decidedly mixed bag. Rudd is quite enjoyable in his role and Kate Mara is solid in a thankless part as wife of Robinson’s absurd protagonist but much of Tim’s schtick feels overly engineered for awkwardness. There’s comedy gold in many of the embarrassing episodes; a recurring joke about Marvel movie spoilers, physical pratfalls involving spontaneous singing and a curious incident opposite a psychedelic toad stand out in the askew stew. Ultimately the threadbare lead character doesn’t give the ensemble much to work with in terms of truly plumbing the insights of the film’s premise. It’s amusing but could have been more.
ArtsXchange, South Fulton Arts (SFA), and BronzeLens Film Festival are uniting to present Art in Action, a free evening of films and community conversation Friday, June 20 honoring the role of working artists in shaping Atlanta’s cultural legacy. Featured are four locally made documentary films produced and commissioned by SFA in 2023 and 2024 as part of its Filmer series and explore artists’ influence: City of Kings, Just People, Rhyme Travelers and Say Yes to Destiny.
The event is scheduled for 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, June 20, at ArtsXchange, 2148 Newnan St., East Point, Ga., 30344.
South Fulton Arts and its annual Filmer series produces short documentaries that uplift Atlanta’s vibrant creative community through the eyes of emerging filmmakers in a collaborative project between filmmaker and artist. Art in Action will spotlight those who remind us that artists don’t only create—they heal, organize, and transform.
“Atlanta didn’t become a cultural capital by accident. It was built by everyday artists who understood art, not as fringe, not as an add-on, but as an integral component of culture, and of the struggle for social and economic justice,” said The ArtsXchange co-founder and Executive Director Alice Lovelace.
Art in Action features three documentaries from the South Fulton Arts 2023 Filmer 6 series including Ethan Payne’s Rhyme Travelers that centers the Soul Food Cypher, a safe and liberating space for emcees to practice and grow; City of Kings directed by Will Feagins Jr., a visual narrative of Atlanta’s graffiti writing culture and its place in the global graffiti community; and creative director Jonathan Banks tells the stories of ReEntry Arts Connection, which uses art to reduce recidivism in Just People. Lastly, Say Yes to Destiny (2024 Filmer 7 series) – also by Banks – is a portrait of ArtsXchange founder Lovelace and her legacy of tireless cultural work and community impact.
“ArtsXchange is a catalyst for important conversations influenced by artists and others who shape culture,” said South Fulton Arts Executive Director Jennifer Bauer-Lyons. “Our Filmer series has become a recognized platform for local creatives to convey untold stories, and we are proud to partner with organizations who help continue this mission.”
Filmmakers scheduled to participate in the talkback include Banks, Feagins, Alex Acosta of Soul Food Cypher, and Dr. Curtis A. King and Garry Yates of ReEntry Arts Connection.
The aim is to encourage viewers to reflect on how artists anchor communities, and how the arts remain essential to building an imaginative, equitable and prosperous society.
“ArtsXchange is a living example of the power of artists to create their own destiny,” Lovelace said. “So we’re excited to host an event that shows many examples of artists and the real, lasting influence they have on our daily lives and our future.”
ArtsXchange is a cultural facility founded in the Black arts tradition that empowers artists, social justice activists, and creative entrepreneurs to engage communities through the transformative power of the arts. The pillars of its programming are Visual Arts, Literature and Literacy and Land Conservation. It serves its communities through workshops, exhibitions, concerts, health and wellness classes, films, performances, and community gardens. Its resident studio artist program supports emerging, mid-career and established artists by providing affordable creative spaces. As cultural stewards, it fosters resilience within its communities as a gathering, sharing and organizing space. The facility makes the arts accessible to individuals traditionally excluded from creative industries, responding directly to community needs through partnerships and collaborations with like-minded arts organizations, social justice advocates and people-led initiatives.
South Fulton Arts generates and fosters strategic partnerships to increase access to high-quality, free arts programming for South Fulton County and Metro Atlanta residents and communities. Through successful partnerships—such as with artists, teaching artists, schools and other nonprofits—SFA collaborates, connects, and provides financial and functional resources as a producing partner to bring artist-inspired projects to life. SFA includes the communities of South Atlanta, Chattahoochee Hills, College Park, City of South Fulton, East Point, Fairburn, Hapeville, Palmetto and Union City. In addition to its programming, SFA produces the monthly “Spark” podcast and its biannual magazine Arts United. Last year SFA partnered with 90 artists and organizations to bring 220 engagements to more than 19,000 audience members across 18 venues.
BronzeLens Film Festival of Atlanta is a non-profit organization founded in 2009, dedicated to bringing national and worldwide attention to Atlanta as a center for film and film production for people of color. Its mission is two-fold: to promote Atlanta as a film mecca for people of color, and to showcase films and provide networking opportunities that will develop the next generation of filmmakers. BronzeLens is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences qualifying film festival for the Short Film Awards category. The short film that receives the BronzeLens Best Short Award may now be eligible to enter the Academy’s Short Subject competition for the concurrent season.
ArtsXchange receives support from the Fulton County Arts & Culture under the guidance of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, the Georgia Council for the Arts under the guidance of the State of Georgia Legislators with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Threshold Foundation, Community Corps, Fidelity Charitable Trust, City of East Point Convention & Visitors Bureau, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Its literary partners are South Fulton Arts and Atlanta Writers Club. The organization collaborates with the Partnership for Southern Equity through the Justice Green Accelerator, with funds from the BEZOS Earth Fund. Shades of Green Permaculture provides substantial in-kind support. The organization thrives thanks to the support of individual and business donors, board members and its membership.
Below are trailers for the four films included as part of Art in Action night:
This requel is no equal to 40 years of predecessors in the triumphant underdog series, but the good-natured, proven crowd-pleasing formula will still likely delight young viewers and families. Jonathan Entwistle’s Karate Kid: Legends (C+) places casually charismatic young actor Ben Wang at its center, transplanted from Beijing to NYC with a non-emotive mother (Ming-Na Wen) who doesn’t support his kung fu fighting hobby. His character befriends a pizza parlor purveyor and former boxer played by Joshua Jackson and his teen daughter and love interest (Sadie Stanley); and when wronged by an underdeveloped neighborhood bully, feisty fighter and romantic rival character (Aramis Knight), our hero turns to two mentors in the lineage of the “Mr. Miyagi” school of karate – Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio – to prepare him for an avenging “Five Boroughs” showdown. This merging of martial arts multiverses prompts some head-scratching force-fits, and the color-by-numbers story line fails in delivering even the smallest morsels of surprise. Still, the movie is upbeat, with some fun, fast-paced fighting stunts and joy in the relaxed depictions of found family especially – and surprisingly – between Wang and Jackson, who’s particularly good in this role. The obligatory presence of Chan and Macchio yields distracting and perfunctory doses of fan service rather than consequential plot advancement. It’s all more pretty than gritty and looks largely filmed on sound stages. Video gamified graphics, comic book dissolves and animated explainers dumb down the drama even further for those with zero attention span. It’s all perfectly serviceable fare and doesn’t wax all that poetic as it strikes its predetermined poses.
The eighth and purportedly last installment in the stunt-forward espionage film series, Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (B-) is a very late bloomer, with both extended exposition and also a soggy undersea sequence overstaying their welcome before the movie’s final hour finally delivers the goods with intersecting sequences of suspense and Tom Cruise in an amazing fight climbing between two mid-air biplanes. For Cruise, this film delivers all the tropes: maverick hero who is the only one with the right answers to save the world, extended risky business in underwear (this time on a submarine) and so much running through cities that a few good men would hardly be able to keep up the pace. The story is over-engineered, but the stakes are high. The ensemble doesn’t get much room to shine, except Angela Bassett who’s in the zone as a resolute American president. And alas few new gadgets are introduced to add to the novelty factor in a series often known for surprising disguises and inventions. The movie really rises to the occasion in the final act with Simon Pegg and Hayley Atwell adding aplomb to the climactic countdown; but by then many may have lost patience with it. Like the seven films before it in the series, it’s a film of impeccable crafts, mighty set pieces and globetrotting adventure. As a franchise it has eclipsed its TV origins to become its own sensation, and still producer Cruise is giving it his all to justify viewers choosing the big screen experience. There are some clever grace notes connecting the new film to prior outings, although this direct sequel to Dead Reckoning can certainly be watched standalone and will not be all that much more confusing. The villain being AI in these final two outings is prescient but also a little underwhelming. Fortunately what starts out as a snooze sticks the landing with Cruise’s control.
Wonders never cease when one outruns becoming deceased: Grim gamification, the stuff of snuff and the brackets of kicking the bucket collide in Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s supernatural horror film Final Destination Bloodlines (B-). The jaw-dropping extended introductory sequence, set atop a high-rise restaurant tower in the ‘60s where uneasy group revelry on a glass dance floor sets the stage for suspense, is so stunningly spectacular that the rest of the movie suffers in comparison. The Rube Goldberg style machinations of this opening salvo present the ultimate premonition in a film series known for fractious fortune telling. The movie soon settles into something more routine; but even in its episodic format, it’s a hoot of a horror. The movie’s modern-day Final Girl, winningly portrayed by Kaitlyn Santa Juana, is a student suffering violent recurring nightmares, tracking down the one person capable of breaking the cycle of death and saving her family from the grisly demise that inevitably awaits them all. Most of the ensemble is not especially memorable as they face the existential watch list predicting their own expirations; the high concept eclipses the distinction or power of any individual performances. The creepy sound effects, on-the-nose needle drops and cartoonishly gruesome kills arrive like crafty and sometimes darkly comedic clockwork. The film slyly showcases a sordid and sometimes surprising scorecard. It isn’t particularly scary but is tense when it counts.
It’s a support group for superheroes as a ragtag bunch of renegades stares into the void of depression to summon better days in solidarity as Jake Schreier’s Thunderbolts* (A-), the most cohesive and satisfying and least fussy Marvel film in quite a while. Looking to get out from under the trauma dump and back with a chest pump, several outcast MCU characters get a timely reintroduction. Ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes — previously introduced characters Yelena Belova, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, Ghost, Taskmaster and John Walker — embarks on a dangerous mission that forces them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts. Florence Pugh and David Harbour are emotional and comic standouts as literal family members in this film of found family. Lewis Pullman is a solid addition to the troupe, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a delight as a prickly politico. The action sequences are a thrill, the sarcastic comedy is consistent and the emotions are earned as natural outcroppings of solid character work. Music by Son Lux gracefully underscores the occasion of a thoughtful allegory about the road to mental health recovery and how even heroes need a boost from each other sometimes. This rewards the casual viewer and those obsessed with Marvel minutiae alike.
NOTE: This Cannes Film Festival 2024 entry premiered April 26, 2025 at the Atlanta Film Festival.
It’s a turf war for a surf corps as Nicolas Cage’s character, revisiting his idyllic childhood beach with an optimistic nostalgia, becomes entangled in an escalating conflict with local bullies led by Julian McMahon that pushes him to his psychological limits. Lorcan Fennigan’s offbeat thriller The Surfer (B) summons that urge to avenge those who have crushed one’s precious sandcastle or pierced the armor of one’s very existence. The film is a triumph of mood and tone, filmed on a sun-baked Australian shore where even the animals appear to be mocking the titular character’s plight while a twisted form of toxic masculinity settles in on the seaside enclave. The film is told from Cage’s objective point of view, and audiences will truly relate to the notion of a world crumbling around his increasingly pathetic persona. The bright colors of cars and cabanas eclipse the man’s harrowing breakdown while the exotica style music seems to gleefully dance on his living grave. This is Cage at his most Cagey, culminating in some truly outrageous misadventures as he employs survival tactics in a myopic and petty tribal battle; even eating and drinking become a ridiculous ritual for this man entrenched against the world. His character isn’t really crafty enough to go full Falling Down on his adversaries, but it’s all a fascinating journey into this particular rabbit hole. McMahon’s character is a delightful primal match for him, and the set pieces and situations set up a perfect insular environment for a complete unravel. The film isn’t terribly insightful but is mostly rather riveting. Experience the undertow of this playful and peculiar tale; but whenever the crafty Cage is involved in an idiosyncratic project, swim at your own risk.
An offbeat espionage thriller franchise gets a full buddy comedy treatment in the tax season extension surprise sure to please action fans. Gavin O’Connor ups the ante from its predecessor for an epic sequel, The Accountant 2 (A-), by maximizing the intrigue and world building of his protagonist Christian Wolff’s (Ben Affleck, never better) savant status as an advantage in all aspects of his life and pairing this idiosyncratic character primarily with his lethal bad boy brother Brax (the absolutely fantastic John Bernthal). This time the stakes are higher and involve timely topics such as human trafficking. The film starts with some extremely larger than life environments showcasing cunning and comedy – namely a bingo parlor turned bloodbath and a romance convention augmented by algorithms. Treasury Agent Marybeth Medina, played again with aplomb by Cynthia Addai-Robinson, is a convener of the odd couple siblings to get to the heart of a murder mystery, and Daniella Pineda is dynamite as a ruthless assassin. O’Connor wields both humor and high-stakes action with tremendous dexterity in this installment; and although the film loses a little momentum in the final act, it’s so successful in luring audiences to care deeply about the characters amidst the stunts and grandstanding. Giddy moments include manipulation of traffic lights and home computers and even honkeytonk dance floors in this raucous romp with unexpected heart and verve. It’s much more gripping and fun than anyone could have anticipated.
The auteur director behind Fruitvale Station deliriously detours from his Wakanda and Creed franchise universes for an original passion project: Sinners (A) is Ryan Coogler unleashed, a polished and imaginative production of a writer/director at the peak of his powers. There’s an extended sequence – and you’ll know what it is when you encounter it – of such accelerating atmosphere and transcendent beauty and surprise, you might feel like your mind just played tricks on you. Think “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” by way of Edgar Allan Poe. Coogler’s slow-burn place making of the American South in the 1930s lends both specificity and spellbinding other-worldliness to his mystery box of a genre-hopper. The filmmaker’s man-muse Michael B. Jordan is terrific in the dual role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack, former soldiers and Chicago gangland fixtures with something to prove as they return to their rural hometown origins to ostensibly stand up a juke joint and mentor their musically gifted cousin, a sharecropper and preacher’s son played by R&B prodigy Miles Caton, one of the film’s exquisite sonic discoveries. Incidentally Jordan’s two characters are two sides of an unlucky penny and splendidly rendered, high on the actor’s double star wattage. Some other ensemble members are blissfully reborn in their roles, namely Hailee Steinfeld and Wunmi Mosaku as feisty connectors between cultural worlds. Delroy Lindo is a welcome veteran portraying the town drunk trope with Shakespearean panache, and Jack O’Connor gives lulling lift to a character conjuring cinematic spirits in what feels like nothing short of a battle of the bands in its undercurrent. Coogler applies his eye for epic storytelling in a film marked by characters with preternatural abilities colliding with supernatural scope. Ludwig Göransson’s blues and bluegrass fusion music is intoxicating, as is the sound design underscoring each dramatic line of sinister and sometimes sexy dialogue. The film’s characters are wily magnets for fascinations of the flesh, with world building in pursuit of pulpy ambitions. Autumn Durand Arkapaw’s superb cinematography, shot on 65mm film using a combination of IMAX 15-perf 70mm and Ultra Panavision 70mm cameras, with alternating aspect ratios, provides the perfectly shape-shifting proscenium for a night out like no other. Suffice it to say this film is a no holds barred powder-keg of cinematic excellence with layers of sly subtext fit for decoding and an entertaining surface to simply be relished. Experience this communal discovery in as colossal a theatre as you can access.
