As memorably harmonized by The Free Design, kites are fun. But they’re not that fun. And so it is with Killer Kites, a decent but ultimately self-immolating creature-feature parody from the makers of the more enjoyable Sewer Gators. This follow-up marks the third movie within the BPU, aka the “Brock Peterson Universe,” so named (by me, just now) for director/producer Paul Dale’s recurring role as an obnoxious TV news reporter.

Also reappearing, albeit in a different role, is leading lady Manon Pages. Here, she’s Abby, whose brother is killed is by a kite passed down from their dead grandfather. (Just roll with it.) Perhaps a visit to the Kuntz Yeast Bread Festival can clear up what’s going on? A total goof with purposely awful effects to poke fun at Birdemic, that’s what, with a few Twin Peaks homages thrown in. The more you’re familiar with those, the more you’re in tune with the movie.

Dale and co-director/writer Austin Frosch exhibit good-natured humor even when the jokes are rimshot-ready bad. To wit:

Abby: “You just want to get in my pants.”
Daniel: “Please, Abby, I can’t fit into those.”

As witnessed in a training montage and semi-buried in-jokes (like “PUT STRING HERE” seen amid the thumbtacked pages and photos on a crazed character’s clichéd wall o’ research), the players seem to be having a ball. Not all of it transfers as well as Sewer Gators did — even Pages seems a little uncomfortable compared to last time — but how many other movies dare to depict kite attacks in 1956 Berlin? —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Indeed, BlackBerry is based on the true story of the early aughts’ favorite smartphone (until the iPhone, of course).

I know, I know: “A movie about a wireless device?” But once upon a time, I wondered how a movie about the creation of Facebook would be, could be any good, and look how that turned out.

BlackBerry isn’t up to the masterpiece level of David Fincher’s The Social Network, but it’s great. These days, in a franchise-drowned market, that’s something to celebrate. Leave it to Canada — specifically, director/co-writer Matt Johnson (Operation Avalanche) — to export the kind of adults-appealing dramedy America used to excel at making before discovering, I dunno, movies about buff, laser-fingered dudes in leather space pajamas.

Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) is a realist in a Members Only jacket and thick glasses. Doug Fregin (Johnson, The Dirties) is an idealist with omnipresent sweatband and a Velcro Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wallet. Together, the engineers are 50/50 partners in a revolutionary invention. They just can’t get anyone interested until they meet Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton, 2020’s The Hunt), an arrogant-AF tech exec who, smelling a golden goose, makes a Hail Mary investment in them after being fired from his job.

As we already know, Balsillie’s instinct in the potential of the duo’s gizmo proves dead-on correct. As you might expect, with enormous success, a fractured friendship follows. Certain egos balloon so big, they merit inclusion in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. With millions rolling in, corners are cut to make even more. For a while, it appears Gordon Gecko‘s “Greed is good” credo works. Until the SEC gets wind of illegal practices.

If you know Howerton only from TV’s It’s Sunny in Philadelphia and A.P. Bio, prepare yourself. Bald and brooding, he’s rage incarnate in three-figure suspenders — the intimidating-shark type the late Miguel Ferrer played in spades, both scary and scary-good. Howerton is at once hilarious (although not in ways his fans are used to) and delivers a dramatic performance legitimately worthy of awards consideration.

As is BlackBerry itself. Not unlike the satisfaction “CrackBerry” users got from the clicks of its keyboard, its many highs hit with dopamine bumps. Under Johnson’s purview and ace sense of balance, what initially — and worriedly — resembles another handheld aping of workplace sitcoms like The Office quickly grounds itself as a whip-smart account of one of Big Tech’s greatest success stories and greatest cautionary tales of hubris. In contrast to its subject, however, the film never fails. —Rod Lott

It’s amusing to see viewers of The Drone trash the film on whatever site they streamed/stole it from, tapping such keen observations as “This isn’t scary at all.”

Well, duh, because it’s not meant to be. Granted, shame on the Lionsgate marketing department for misleadingly pushing The Drone as a straight-ahead horror-thriller, but anyone paying a quarter of attention to tone — hell, I’ll be generous and round down to one-eighth — can tell it’s a comedy.

After all, we’re talking about a remote-controlled drone possessed with the soul of its late owner — a serial peeper-cum-rapist-cum-killer of redheads, known as The Violator (Neil Sandilands, TV’s Hap and Leonard) — upon being struck by a fatal bolt of lightning. Hey, it worked for Chucky, right? That its very premise is beyond preposterous is very much the point.

The titular gizmo finds its way to newly married new homeowners Rachel (Alex Essoe, Doctor Sleep) and Chris (John Brotherton, The Conjuring), where it surreptitiously makes a sex tape of them and senses the family dog as a threat to its existence — so much so the machine Googles “animal shelter”! Anyone taking the “flying pervert machine” as anything but parody of contemporary horror, The Drone has whooshed over their noggin like a joke they didn’t get or, well, like a drone.

At the helm of this techno-terror circus is Zombeavers director Jordan Rubin, bringing his fellow writers, Al and John Kaplan, for another round of making light of ridiculous horror-flick trends. While not up to the hilarious heights of that underrated 2014 comedy, The Drone offers enough absurdity to keep Rubin on my radar.

If nothing else, you could spend the movie looking for visual nods to iconic scenes from other genre fare, including Alien 3, The Exorcist III and numeral-free The Shining. But don’t let that distract you from seeing the drone using Snapchat and committing murder by invading someone’s rectum. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Beau Is Afraid isn’t somber, subtle or suspenseful. Nor should it be. Described by director Ari Aster (Hereditary) as a “nightmare comedy,” Beau is a bizarre odyssey through a twisted, unempathetic world. It’s also Aster’s most intimate and possibly important film to date.

Joaquin Phoenix (Joker) stars as Beau, a neurotic man living in an apartment on the corner of John Waters’ Desperate Living and John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. While leaving his apartment to visit his mom, Beau immediately loses his keys, luggage and sanity.

Describing much more of the film’s premise will almost certainly diffuse the magic. Instead, enjoy this sequence of events from 10 minutes of the film’s first act:
• A naked Beau rolls around with a sweaty man hiding above his bathtub.
• Beau is then hit by a truck and stabbed multiple times by an equally naked homeless man.
• A recovering Beau heals in the bright pink bedroom of a homophobic slur spewing teenaged girl who gives Sadie Sink’s character in The Whale a run for her money.

Beau’s life isn’t a comedy of errors; it’s a hilarious tragedy of worst-case scenarios. The punchline is often cruelty, and Aster’s sick sense of humor often lands with a few especially fucked-up exceptions.

Phoenix carries this three-hour I Think You Should Leave sketch masterfully. He dusts off a bit of the old Freddie Quell for a paradoxically rigid and explosive performance. Doubt, caution and, of course, fear complement the tortured traveler. Beau’s reluctant journey proves there’s no place like home — even when it’s hell.

Beyond the plot’s absurdity, Fiona Crombie’s (The Favourite) production design oozes with detail. Consider Beau’s setting an upgrade from the vivid (albeit rarely seen) interiors of Aster’s Midsommar (minus the runes in favor of misspelled expletives and graffitied dicks, naturally). The film flows into cookie-cutter suburbia, a beautifully animated dream within a dream and, finally, Beau’s mother’s house. Each transition is jarring in all the right places.

Despite being played for excruciatingly painful laughs, Beau also doesn’t shed the pit-in-your-stomach feeling that gave Hereditary its staying power. Even while the film’s universe is built on a general apathy around death, it carries an impact that builds to a dreadful crescendo. Granted, by the end, what few demises remain feel a bit weightless. But that probably comes less so from Aster’s writing of any one scene, and more from the exhaustion of a saga that’s about 15 to 20 minutes too long.

It’ll be years — possibly decades — before folks stop chewing on Beau Is Afraid. It’s everything you could expect from Aster, yet still filled with welcome (and sadistic) surprises. Beau is ultimately a lot of things. “Afraid” barely scratches the surface. —Daniel Bokemper

Opens in theaters Friday.

What’s a nudie cutie without the nudie? Why, it’s What’s Up Front!, directed by Bob Wehling, scripter of 1962’s infamous Eegah. In fact, this film is something of an Eegah reunion, being co-written by Arch Hall Sr. and co-starring caveman-kidnap victim Marilyn Manning.

Homer L. Pettigrew (the weasel-resembling Tommy Holden, Magic Spectacles) used to sell pots and pans. Now, through a setup even a sitcom would reject, the founder of Johnson Bras (Hall Sr. himself) anoints Homer as its first door-to-door brassiere salesman. Homer proves a real mover and shaker, but the sales manager (Carmen Bonacci) schemes with secretary Candy Cotton (Manning) to take credit for all the sales.

Not much of a story hangs on the flick. I’d ask you to forgive that pun, but What’s Up Front! is full of them — all of them. For example, Mr. Johnson laments declining sales by telling his troops, “Bras are sagging!” Homer moves from one mishap to the next, including accidentally stepping on the dress of Mr. Johnson’s lovely daughter (Carolyn Walker), ripping it partly off. His visit to hillbilly territory yields one true laugh when a prospective buyer says, “Last time we bought anything from a travelin’ salesman, I was 13! Just married!”

For a movie about female undergarments, that focus never veers to the fetishistic. Thus, What’s Up Front! feels remarkably modest, as if it’s fearful to take action beyond a wink — sexy, yet sexless. Amid the nudie-cute boom at the box office, its total absence of bared skin makes it a curiosity. So colorful and carefree, it might be mistaken for a Walt Disney picture if production values were present (for example, underwater ocean scenes are so clearly a swimming pool, you can see the floor). Is the sight gag of a goat with lingerie tied to its horns really all that far from a field goal-kicking mule? —Rod Lott