“The Bluff”
This silly and inane movie is a star vehicle for Priyanka Chopra Jonas (the wife of singer Nick Jonas). She plays Ercel, a housewife of the Caribbean married to a seafarer (Ismael Cruz Córdova) who is off on a mission. Ercel is caring for their son Issac (Vedanten Naidoo) and her much younger sister-in-law Elizabeth (Safia Oakley-Green, “Anemone,” “Out of the Darkness”) on Cayman Brac. Their idyllic tropical paradise is suddenly visited by a posse of unsavories demanding a stash of gold.
Turns out Ercel was previously “Bloody Mary,” a cutthroat pirate captain of the high seas. She toggles to Caribbean kick-ass queen and dispatches the first wave of henchmen, leading to a showdown with Mary/Ercel’s former running mate, Captain Connor (Karl Urban), who has taken her husband hostage.
Director Frank E. Flowers (“Haven”) then sends Jonas, dressed up ninja-style, through a disjointed montage of action sequences. She slices up baddies, or blows them up in various creative ways (the use of explosives is one of the more innovative aspects of the film) as her charges and betrothed sit haplessly by. ”The Bluff”’s title comes from the broad cliffside — or brac — of the island, where Mary has weapons stashed throughout a maze of booby-trapped tunnels. Flowers, who is from the Caymans, allegedly concocted the story from historical happenings and local lore. It’s half-baked, hackneyed mid-1800s high seas mush. Jonas most certainly deserved a better wing-spreader and Urban, who brings some of his cheeky, gruff machismo from “The Boys” to the part, isn’t enough to right the ship. Paging Jack Sparrow. — Tom Meek
Streaming on Prime Video
“Paul McCartney: Man on the Run”
Morgan Neville (“20 Feet from Stardom,” “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”) hands Paul McCartney the mic to tell his version of the Beatles breakup and revisit his challenges as a solo artist in the aftermath. Neville deftly weaves together news and concert footage, while McCartney overlays context in an almost avuncular manner. Beatles fans will startle to hear McCartney say he, not John/Yoko, broke up the Fab Four. He also stokes the “Paul is dead” conversation with a tongue-in-cheek wink. A post-Beatles competition with Lennon recurs throughout the doc. Other voices include Moody Blues guitarist and Wings bandmate Denny Laine, McCartney’s friend and the Pretenders founder Chrissie Hynde, and Sean Lennon. At the core of the film is McCartney’s first wife and Wings keyboardist Linda Eastman, who passed away in 1998 from breast cancer. Their camaraderie and companionship is palpable. We see Eastman rearing their four children while touring with the band, and how hands-on the McCartneys were, considering Paul’s fame and financial resources. We also get McCartney’s run-ins with the law for marijuana use both in England and, more notoriously, Japan. Neville’s post-Beatle portrait props up a McCartney who’s puckish and brash but also complex and vulnerable. — Tom Meek
Streaming on Prime Video
“Hoppers”
“Hoppers” hits a sweet spot on the Pixar spectrum between the lighthearted slapstick of the “Cars” franchise and the heavy social themes of “WALL-E” (2008). Teenage environmental activist Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda of “May December”) is snooping around her college lab when she makes a startling discovery: her mentor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy), has developed tech which allows researchers to “hop” their consciousness into a lifelike animatronic animal (“It’s nothing like ‘Avatar!'” Dr. Sam defensively hisses). Seeing an opportunity to restore fauna to her family swimming hole and save it from the bulldozer of smarmy Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm), Mabel commandeers a robo-beaver and takes to the woods. She appeals to the beaver King George (“SNL”’s Bobby Moynihan), laid-back leader of the woodland mammals. They strike up a friendship and she instantly becomes his closest advisor. But Mabel becomes a “beloved Joan-of-Arc-type rebel leader” and inadvertently sparks an animal-vs-human war.
“Hoppers” benefits from a clear creative voice and comic sensibility. Director Daniel Chong, best known as the creator of Cartoon Network’s “We Bare Bears” (also with Moynihan), applies that series’ sweet absurdism to his Pixar directorial debut. The animated character design is crisp and innately funny, with as much comedic mileage springing from reactions and facial expressions as from the script itself. In the film’s cleverest conceit, the animals are only anthropomorphized in scenes written from Mabel’s perspective, otherwise? appearing to humans merely as cuddly critters. It’s a more inventive use of the “Avatar” premise than anything James Cameron’s come up with, and far cuter.
One could quibble with some of the internal logic (why does the mammal king’s entourage include a lizard?), and the ultimate “let’s all get along” approach to ecology may be a bit too naive for 2026. But it’s all such goodhearted fun and kids these days could use a little optimism as they hurtle into adulthood. “Hoppers” ranks alongside “Turning Red” (2022) as one of the sweetest, funniest and most entertaining films Pixar has put out in ages. It also answers the bonus question of “What if animals could text?” The answer: lots of emojis. — Oscar Goff
At Apple Cinemas Cambridge and AMC Assembly Row
“The Ugly Stepsister”
“The Ugly Stepsister” tells the Cinderella story through the lens of the older stepsister, Elvira (Lea Myren). Elvira isn’t ugly at all — in fact, she’s quite lovely — but she wears braces and doesn’t carry herself with the prim-and-properness befitting a fairytale princess.
When the Prince (Isac Calmroth) issues an invitation to all local virgins to join him at a grand ball, Elvira’s mother enrolls her in charm school, dance lessons, and an increasingly draconian “beauty regimen.” Elvira is fitted with corsets, an iron maiden-like nose binder, and a pearlescent tapeworm egg to suppress her appetite. Elvira dreams of a life of fairytale bliss, but how much of her will be left to fit into that glass slipper?
Norwegian filmmaker Emilie Blichfeldt’s retelling is nothing like a Disney film would be. Gross-out practical effects such as Elvira’s false lashes, which are sewn on with needle and thread while she’s still conscious, are featured in loving closeup to maximize shock value. They’ve earned the movie a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Makeup & Hairstyling. Blichfeldt subverts the Cinderella story on every level; the “charming” Prince Julian is a privileged misogynist, and even Cinderella herself (Thea Sofie Loch Næss) is more scheming and worldly than legend typically has it. It’s a film as wicked as its stepmother, and as unsparing as a witch’s curse.
This jet-black body horror comedy is not merely midnight-movie freakiness. “The Ugly Stepsister” at heart creates a savage satire of the impossible beauty standards imposed upon young women. Myren is remarkable, creating a character who is simultaneously tragic, darkly comical, and horrifying. Her Elvira is vain, not particularly bright, and by the end something close to monstrous, but we feel for her all the same. Her fantasies, ripped straight from the covers of romance paperbacks, are hilarious and absurd, but the contrast between them and Elvira’s real-life physical deterioration is heartbreaking. In a more forgiving world, Elvira might have lived happily ever after. As it stands, her outlook is decidedly Grimm. — Oscar Goff
At the Brattle Theatre 3/6-3/9
Cambridge writer Tom Meek’s reviews, essays, short stories and articles have appeared in WBUR’s The ARTery, The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Globe, The Rumpus, The Charleston City Paper and SLAB literary journal. Tom is also a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics and rides his bike everywhere.
Oscar Goff is a writer and film critic based in Somerville. He is film editor and senior critic for the Boston Hassle and his work has appeared in the monthly Boston Compass newspaper and publications such as WBUR’s The ARTery and iHeartNoise. He is a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, and the Online Film Critics Society.
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