For Wonder Woman 1984, the sequel to the 2017 phenomenon, director and co-writer Patty Jenkins really leans in to the date of the title. After a flashback prologue showing a feisty young Diana Prince (a returning Lilly Aspell) competing as a kid in her island home’s version of American Ninja Warrior, Jenkins splashes the screen with a colorful, bubbly, all-American look at our nation’s capital in ways it never really was in the Reagan era, which is to say looking not dissimilar to Back to the Future Part II’s living-cartoon idea of 2015.

All the rainbow neon and big hair aside, this Washington, D.C.-set intro works well and with a winking vibe, no doubt influenced by Richard Donner’s vision of Metropolis in Superman as a veritable domino line of pratfalls. The Mack Sennett-style chaos snakes indoors to a mall jewelry store robbery foiled by the arrival of — yep, you guessed it — Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot). One of the swiped pieces is a mysterious chunk of, well, no one knows, so the FBI enlists the Smithsonian to help ID it. That’s where the plainclothes Diana works, as does the socially awkward Barbara Minerva (Bridesmaids’ Kristen Wiig).

The artifact of unknown origin is revealed to be a wishing rock, in that when someone holds it and speaks their desire aloud, a wisp of wind blows their bangs askew and the wish is immediately granted. Such a powerful object attracts the greedy hands of failing oilman Max Lord (an über-hammy Pedro Pascal, Kingsman: The Golden Circle), who seduces Barbara to gain access; she herself uses it to undergo one for those overnight movie makeovers from meek nerd to foxy mama.

Diana unknowingly leverages its powers, too, allowing Jenkins and her fellow scripters Geoff Johns (Aquaman) and Dave Callaham (2014’s Godzilla) to bring back love interest Steve Trevor (Chris Pine, Hell or High Water). Having perished in the first film’s end, Steve is resurrected in perhaps the laziest way possible: via the silly science of comic-book plotting. However, the arrival of Trevor, a World War I pilot, into a baffling, parachute-panted future livens WW84 tremendously, thanks to Pine’s unwavering commitment to not minding looking goofy. His comic performance is the MVP of the sequel, bar none.

What takes the air out of WW84 is the common archenemy of superhero cinema: third-act bloat. Given its 2.5-hour running time, one could make the case for fourth-act bloat as well. By then, Max Lord’s quest for world domination has been run into the ground with nowhere else to go but run further into the ground, to the point of subterranean. Barbara’s own transformation from human hottie to a CGI cheetah woman is needless, especially as the character resembles an The Island of Dr. Moreau abomination filtered through the costume department of Cats.

Still, a lot remains to like about Wonder Woman 1984. Even when saddled with hokey dialogue in the de rigueur showdown, Gadot believably embodies goodwill and decency. She shines as a straight-and-serious heroine, too, never better than in Jenkins’ big action set piece in the middle — and in the Middle East — which recalls one that put Indiana Jones through the peak-Spielberg paces of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The movie benefits from more humor and less world-building than its predecessor, before giving in to the subgenre’s worst tendencies of epically reaching to out-epic the most recent fantasy epic, to less-than-epic effect. —Rod Lott

Over the past couple of decades, I think we can all agree two of the best cinematic examples of total mind-fucks have been The Matrix and Inception, right? At least that’s what Entertainment Weekly told me recently.

That being said, I’m pretty sure the Ethiopian flick Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway has them both beat and beaten badly with intense imagination and general weirdness that puts those multimillion tentpoles to increasing shame with each subsequent viewing.

In the far future of a retro world, Special Agent Gagano (deformed actor Daniel Tadesse) is assigned to virtually enter the Psychobook — this universe’s version of the Internet — and try to stop the destructive computer virus called the Soviet Union. After a double-cross or two, Gagano finds himself trapped in the dusty mainframe.

Traveling through the virtual world of New Ethiopia, the pizza-loving Gagano continually tries to wake up and find his way back to his wife, a blonde giantess, to keep his promise of helping her open a kickboxing academy. As an Irish-accented Stalin and corrupt hero Batfro try at every turn to stop him, once he realizes the power of the world he’s in, he becomes unstoppable, with the help of the titular Jesus.

I think.

Expat director Miguel Llanso, cherry-picking from the best (worst?) of 1970s pop culture, from Filipino kung-fu to dystopic Philip K. Dick novels, has crafted a beautifully tacky world for his cast to play in, with the enigmatic Tadesse doing most of the surreal heavy lifting. Jesus is Afro-futurism sci-fi at its best, a future awash in the flotsam of the past and the jetsam of an unpredictable psyche. —Louis Fowler

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It always bothered me that The Last Starfighter was never that big a smash among the youth of 1984.

My family never went to the movies when I was a kid, so when it was originally released, I had to make do with the novelization I picked up at a Scholastic Book Fair. I read the tome cover to cover for months until it finally premiered on HBO, fully living up to — and surpassing — my juvenile imagination. (I felt the same way about SpaceCamp, but that’s a different story.)

Teenager Alex (Lance Guest) spends most of his days pushing off his girlfriend, Maggie (Catherine Mary Stewart), to play the only video game at the trailer park, Starfighter. When he finally beats the game, a DeLorean-style space car swoops down and takes him to the farthest reaches of the galaxy to fight evil aliens intent on universal domination.

This movie had everything that would give a kid stuck in a small Texas town some hope to one day escape. Of course, being so young, I didn’t leave for many years, happy enough to just watch this movie for the time being. But, every time I passed the Space Invaders machine in the local diner, that didn’t mean I didn’t give it my damnedest, quarter after quarter, just in case.

Watching the movie some 30-plus years later, that same feeling of astral escape is still present, with believable performances from both Guest and Stewart. And, upon this recent viewing, I was surprised to see Dan O’Herlihy — he of Halloween III, RoboCop and The Whoopee Boys fame — underneath all that makeup as the friendly reptilian navigator Grig.

And while I have come to realize no distant extraterrestrial races have put an arcade game in an inconspicuous spot for intergalactic enlistment as a star warrior, if I see one, I always stop to give it the once-over, because you never know. —Louis Fowler

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For her 17 years of life, Chance Sinclair (Avery Konrad, 12 Rounds 3: Lockdown) has believed she carries a birth defect that requires daily blood transfusions and causes skin tumors when exposed to direct sunlight. You and I and every movie watcher in history know better, of course: She’s a vampire!

Soon she’ll learn the truth: Her parents are vampires, too, as is her little sister, Luck. In fact, her ice-queen mother, June (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina matriarch Annette Reilly), is attempting to wrest control of the House of Sinclair from June’s own father, August (Timothy V. Murphy, MacGruber). Since he’s not going down without a fight, June plots to give it, by hiring a chef (Jerry Maguire kid Jonathan Lipnicki, all grown up) whose culinary skills are matched by his autism, to cater the clan’s annual dinner and garnish August’s steak crostini with poisonous sprouts.

That’s where Broil suddenly — and oddly — decides to change protagonists, pushing all of its chips to the chef. While the shift is abrupt, it’s the least of Broil’s missteps. Deeply ensnared in the who-cares dynamics of sexy-vampire-dynasty politics and all its splinter groups, the second film from Edward Drake (2012’s Animals) is highly reminiscent of the bloodsucking brothers and sisters in the undemanding The Hamiltons and its undemanded sequel, The Thompsons, whose characters I also found incredibly grating — and they weren’t named after months of the year or synonyms for “happenstance.”

Among this cast, the Juliette Lewis-esque Konrad makes a big impression in being vacuous. Her idea of emoting is widening her eyes to maximum pupilage, so it’s something of a relief when Drake rewards more screen time to Reilly, Lipnicki and a whole dining room table of Sinclairs with napkins draped over their heads while a purple orb manifests between them. Believe it or not, Lipnicki marks Broil’s one true surprise. I haven’t seen him onscreen since his aforementioned debut precociously spouting fun facts about the weight of the human head to Tom Cruise, but somewhere in between playing The Little Vampire and preparing a feast for a full-grown family of them, he learned how to deliver an adult performance.

Unfortunately, his goodwill is baked into a flavorless batch of Twilight over easy. Like a live-action adaptation paperback of paranormal fantasy puffery — Broil even comes with chapter headings, as if its scale is epic — the movie looks great, but as my dad always warned, looks aren’t everything.

Or was that my mom? —Rod Lott

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Before 2020, science-fiction films about apocalyptic pandemics and other deadly diseases felt fantastically on par with speculative stories featuring invading aliens or murderous cyborgs. But now, it seems as though they’ve become the scariest of science fact.

While the beginning of Before the Fire hasn’t happened — yet — it’s easy to watch what’s going on and picture yourself in middle of trying to escape a large city under martial law and with all air travel shut down, only to escape to a small town where a group of right-wing hicks have taken over, shooting everyone not on their side.

That’s the basic idea of Fire and it mostly works, except for the characters and the actors playing them, all seemingly fresh from a CW casting call. Jenna Lyng Adams stars as Ava, an actress on a show about werewolf strippers. She, her blogger significant other (Jackson Davis) and his hunky brother (Ryan Vigilant) are all so pretty, it kind of sucks all power out of the well-coiffed proceedings.

Much like a vaccine for COVID, there needs to be a good movie made about a pandemic, but, sadly, Before the Fire just isn’t it. However, if we all survive this, it might make a good series to air after Riverdale. —Louis Fowler

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